Technically speaking, she doesn't have the time to focus on whether or not she will write back. And yet, the thought lingers constantly, without permission, in the back of Tammy's mind, lurking in the shadows, waiting to peek out at the least opportune of moments.
She is busy. She is helping her mother pack, choosing what things to bring with them and what things to leave behind. Trying to decide which of their possessions should be sacrificed to the next people who own their house. Walking barefoot into each room to trail her fingers over all the places where her father lived, where she will never be able to set foot again. There's the striped sofa in the living room that he always pretended to hate. There's the burn mark on the floor in front of the stove where he dropped an entire casserole. He renovated one end of the hallway upstairs into a reading nook and filled its shelves with books for Tammy when she was eight. All of these spots will have no meaning to whoever comes next.
Her mother tried not to break eye contact with her, when she told her they couldn't keep the house. It was a hushed conversation over breakfast a week after summer break started, and now it's nearly the end. They can't take everything, and they pack the backseat and trunk of the car with the most important and precious items. Her mum's friend has a spacious guest room with a double bed and a pull-out sofa, and is clearing a corner of her basement so that they don't have to let go of every single thing Tammy's father ever touched.
The house, with its square-shaped backyard, is deeper into suburbia, the type of building that looks just like every other one on its street. It does not stand out except that the front door is painted cherry-red. Two stories with a low stone wall in front, a brick chimney attached to a fireplace that is never used, a two-car garage and an extra spot at the side of the driveway that will belong to Tammy's mother. It's only a ten-minute drive away, but it feels like a whole lifetime.
"Just until we get back on our feet," her mum reassures her before they get out of the car. "It's temporary."
Nadine answers the door and pulls Tammy's mum into a tight hug immediately. She recruits her husband, Oliver, and her son, who's Tammy's age, to help carry their things inside. "You don't lift a finger, Abby," she insists as she sets a cup of tea in front of her. She's always prepared, the kind of stable that revels in other peoples' chaos. She smiles tensely at Tammy, not showing her teeth. "Tamara, would you mind getting your… school things inside, out of the open?"
Because of course, now that they're going to be living here, they had to tell her.
The last half of August is spent sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the guest room, mere feet away from her mother. Tammy spends a lot of time staring up at the ceiling instead of shutting her eyes and drifting off, but there is no tower to sneak up to, not here. She's never quite gotten along with her mum's best friend, has never had much in common with her kids, except maybe the oldest, and that's a thing of the past, now. She thinks there's been a disconnect since her dad died, at least, or maybe even longer. Because, on some level, Tammy is now her mum's best friend, too, and if there's one thing she knows about Nadine, it's how competitive she can get. More than once, she catches herself wondering whether Nadine is maybe even a little bit happy that Tammy has been away at school, opening up Abby's time for her to sweep in and play hero.
Maybe the witch thing is just the cherry on top. Bringing a wand and an owl and a broomstick into the house only furthers the divide between Tammy and the people she now shares a house with. The girls, Mara and Miriam, two and three years younger, respectively, barely look at her; Michael is more polite but still keeps his distance. All of them tiptoe around Tammy like she's dangerous.
No, she definitely does not have the time to let her thoughts stray in Debbie Ocean's direction. She's got quite enough going on. Her thoughts don't listen, though. They stray, anyway.
— • —
King's Cross is bustling with activity, the way it always does on the first morning of September. Through the brick wall separating platforms nine and ten, and Tammy feels, quite suddenly, as if she is a puzzle piece clicking down into the spot where she belongs. The sensation is unfamiliar after the past few weeks spent in a house full of people who don't know how to look directly at her.
It's not until she has wound her way down the entire platform, her mum steadfastly at her side, that she finds her friends. Amita first, who dives headlong into a conversation with Tammy's mother that is sure to carry on until they board the train, and then Rose, looking a little flustered as always. She can't see Daphne anywhere, but her girlfriend is decidedly unhelpful when Tammy asks, only fluttering a hand to gesture back the way she came and mumbling something about drama.
So she can't see Daphne, but she can see Debbie. She looks exactly the same and wildly different all at once. She stands with her spine straight, shoulders held back, eyes glinting dark. Looks older, somehow, like she's simply seen too much. It takes Tammy a moment to figure out what's missing, what's making the other girl seem impossibly off-balance: Lou. They're usually glued together at the hip, but the tall blonde is nowhere in sight, and while Debbie isn't entirely alone, given the way her other friends are crowded in close to her, Lou's absence seems significant.
"Be good, okay?" Tammy's mother tugs her into a hug, and she nods her promise to the request, pretending like she's not already planning on sneaking out of her dormitory tonight. Her mum catches the worry in her eyes and frames Tammy's face in her palms like she's a child. "Don't worry about me too much, okay? I'm going to be just fine. Write to me soon, honey, will you?"
It's not until Tammy is on her patrol up and down the train, twenty minutes after the Hogwarts Express has pulled out of the station, that she manages to track Daphne down. The other girl chews her signature bubblegum over a magazine, idly flipping through the pages. About to slide the compartment door open to find out why, exactly, Daphne isn't with Rose, waiting for her and Amita to finish their respective patrols, Tammy gets her answer before her fingers can reach the handle. In the opposite seat, Lou lounges in that easy way she always seems to, arms crossed pointedly over her chest, looking determinedly in any direction besides Daphne's. Next to her, John Frazier waits, watches them, Head Boy badge pinned proudly to his robes. He makes eye contact with Tammy through the glass and shakes his head imperceptibly.
Daphne and Lou stay there until the train stops that afternoon. "What happened?" asks Tammy, wide-eyed, when they emerge from the Hogwarts Express, one after the other, and stride in opposite directions without a word to each other.
Tossing her hair, Daphne leads the way towards the carriages waiting to take them up to the castle. "I made captain," she announces, her badge catching the light. She has pinned it in precisely the same place where Tammy's prefect badge sits, on display for the whole world to see. "Miller's jealous, and John wanted us to apologize to each other." The way she says it, it's incredibly obvious that they did no such thing. She and Lou are both far too stubborn for that.
As their carriage jolts into movement, Tammy deflates a little. Just slightly. Because maybe, over the summer, she sort of entertained the idea that she might be able to do something like talk to Debbie outside of their shared space in the dead of night. She thinks maybe they could be friends, out in the open. But if this is how the school year begins, that seems like a far-off, unrealistic dream.
Given that this is the first day back, they split up when they reach the Great Hall, sliding into seats at their own house tables. There is a stranger up at the staff table in Professor Ocean's seat, and the sight of this newcomer makes something turn hollow in Tammy's stomach. It brings a sudden gravity to the information she already knew from Debbie's letter. A knot of fourth-years lean their heads together across the table to whisper about it, and she is too close to them not to hear Debbie's mother's name mentioned. She feels like she knows a heavy secret that nobody else is privy to, though Nine-Ball sits a few feet to her right and if anyone knows, it's probably her. Tammy wishes she had friends in her own house, anyone to distract her from sinking deeper into this train of thought. The other girls in her year are nice enough, but she thinks they're more like friendly acquaintances than actual friends.
The first years shuffle in with their usual trepidation, wide-eyed, crowded together as if the physical closeness to their classmates is reassuring. Tammy makes an effort to smile at the ones she can make eye contact with. The benefit of not having friends to sit with is that she can keep the seats on either side of her open, making space for a few of the newest Ravenclaws. She winds up with a boy on her right, Dax, and a girl on her left, Jordan. Dax is Muggleborn, and clearly reassured when Tammy tells him they have that in common. She directs their gazes up to Professor McGonagall for the pre-dinner welcome speech, a hush sweeping across the room. The headmistress is undoubtedly good at commanding attention from the entire student body.
The usual spiel gives way into the more specific news quickly enough. "Unfortunately, we lost Professor Ocean over the summer," she says, no tiptoeing around it, and Tammy immediately searches Debbie out. She almost expects to find the other girl with her head bowed down, dark hair obscuring her face from view – but after the glimpse of her she caught at King's Cross, what she sees makes more sense. Debbie pointedly holds her chin up, gaze fixed unblinkingly on Professor McGonagall, a statuesque image of someone entirely unaffected by the mention of her mother.
But is she holding her breath?
A little guiltily, she realizes she's been focused so intently on trying to see how Debbie is doing that she's missed half of Professor McGonagall's little speech. "Please welcome our new transfiguration teacher, Professor Chang," she is announcing when Tammy drags her eyes back to the staff table, and the newcomer rises from her seat. "Professor Chang is an alumni of Ravenclaw House, and I am pleased to welcome her back to Hogwarts." And then she moves right along, leaving the topic behind. Tammy eyes the new teacher for a moment. She's pretty, with sleek dark hair and bright eyes, and falls deep into conversation with Professor Longbottom immediately as the Great Hall descends into mealtime.
She finds her gaze drawn back to the Gryffindor table a few more times. Debbie doesn't seem to be looking back, but that's not why she looks. All she can think about is how she felt, coming back to school again after her dad died. How lonely she was, and how numb everything went. She's searching for cues in the way Debbie holds herself, anything to piece together how the other girl is handling things. The lack of a letter back seemed like a telltale sign that it's not particularly well, but she looks relatively okay, from afar.
Maybe she's simply better at moving forward than Tammy ever was. Or maybe she's just good at pretending.
She leads the new first-years up to Ravenclaw Tower, settles them into their new dormitories. Tells them about curfew and then feels, maybe rightfully, like the worst prefect ever when she steps back out into the corridor later.
The astronomy tower, midnight.
It's not an official plan by any means – she considered writing it into the end of her letter but left it out in the end, unsure whether they've reached a point where they can mention that place, or the conversations they have there, offhand. But it's a possibility, nonetheless. She imagines that if there's going to be a particular night on which Debbie is unable to sleep, this first night back in the castle without her mother here would probably be it.
Maybe she pins a few too many hopes on that, though. Because when Debbie doesn't show, there is this crushing disappointment she didn't quite expect to feel.
It's not a big deal, she tells herself after she's given up and descended the spiral staircase to the base of the astronomy tower. The path back to her dormitory is deserted, her footfalls bouncing off the stone walls and coming back a little louder. She climbs into her bed and stares at the ceiling in the dark. There was no real agreement to go to the tower tonight; every other time they have sat side by side there, it's been pure coincidence. Debbie isn't obligated to go there just so that Tammy can help her work through her loss. This isn't about Tammy at all – it's about Debbie, and her mum. That's it.
Tammy blinks and sets her mouth into a thin, straight line. She is not going to cry over Debbie Ocean.
NOTES | Well, the two of them are respectively going through downright awful summers, so... let's hope it gets better from here on out? I'll see you next chapter for the start of sixth-year classes, not one but TWO Harry Potter character cameos, and the introduction of one of my favourite tropes. In the meantime, I would love if you could leave a review and let me know what you think of this fic so far!