Cambridge, England.

Thea sat with her legs folded under her, her black pants standing out against the white bedspread on her bed. The room was decorated in simple earth tones-tan bed frame, hardwood floors, brown and white curtains, and tan furniture including a nightstand and dresser. These were all offset by the white bedspread, white lamps, and a white shag carpet under the bed. Grey was mixed in as well, with the addition of grey pillows and blue-grey walls.

She was going over data for the latest tests she had run regarding light. Although she had found a few minor irregularities, everything was looking relatively normal. The lights flickered. Not again.

Thea clicked to save her report and then shut down her laptop, and for good measure, unplugged it, before heading out of her room and down the hall. She pounded on the door to the other bedroom. "Fred!"

After a moment, the door opened, and Thea was treated to the blinding orange walls and curtains, and the ugliest painting she had ever seen over his bed. Tearing her eyes away from the black and white still (the drabbest item in the room apparently), she focused on her roommate. "Please don't use magic. I can't afford to replace another computer. I just can't." She had made the mistake of buying a relatively expensive computer when they had first arrived at Cambridge three months earlier, and within a week, Fred had cast a spell in its vicinity, blowing it up.

Thea had replaced that laptop with a much cheaper Chromebook, which had lasted a few weeks before Fred had accidentally blown that one up. He had just blown the latest one up yesterday, forcing her to replace it yet again.

"Well, then what am I supposed to do?" Fred was pacing around the room like some sort of wild cat-a tiger or perhaps a lion-in a cage. "You may be accustomed to living like a muggle," he said turning to face her, "but I'm not. What did you bring me back for if you weren't even going to let me use magic?"

Muggles were non-magical humans, and at times like these, Fred reminded Thea of a petulant child. She sighed as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She checked it, before turning back to Fred. "Look, I have to go. Ben has something for me, but we'll go out tonight...to one of the college parties here. It's still no magic, but it will be something to do. Just...watch some television or something while I'm gone."

"But there's nothing good on to watch," Fred whined, and Thea had to force herself not to roll her eyes.

"It's only for a few hours. Then I'll be back, and we'll go out," she promised. Thea hurried out before there was further argument and walked the short distance to the science building on campus.

The building had a modern feel-using steel furnishings rather than brick or wood. She knew the inside to be just as advanced as the outside. She made her way down a full hallway to the physics lab. The lab itself was a hodge-podge of equipment and looked a lot more disorderly than it really was. Computers, complex pulleys and other equipment filled the large space making it seem smaller.

Hunched over one of the computers was Dr Benjamin Cooper. His stooped figure tapped the keys of the computer as his brown hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it aside absent-mindedly as he focused intently on the data in front of him.

It was clear he hadn't noticed Thea come in.

Thea cleared her throat.

Ben started, blinking for a moment to focus on Thea. "Oh, Thea. I didn't hear you come in."

"I know," said Thea, stepping forward. "You seemed pretty engrossed in what you were doing."

"I was just going through some data from the atomic reactor," Ben told her apologetically, before straightening his glasses.

Thea waited patiently.

"Oh, I got in touch with my friend, Dr Graham." His cheeks went pink as he said it. "She said she would be happy to take the blood samples you need and to help analyze them."

"That's great," said Thea. "I appreciate it. It will probably take a few days for me to get everything set up. How soon would she be available?"

"She can work with you," said Ben. "Just let me know when you're ready, and I'll let her know."

Thea nodded. "You could have just told me this over the phone, you know."

Ben's cheeks turned pink. "Yes, well, um...I had just wanted to ask for your advice on something."

Thea pretended to look at some of the equipment so he wouldn't see the expression on her face. She knew what he was going to ask-advantage-or drawback in some cases-of being able to read minds.

"Well, Ophelia, Dr Graham that is, she asked me to move in with her."

"Oh?" Thea asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.

Ben shoved his hands in his pockets. "Well, it's just that we haven't been dating all that long..."

"You've been dating for nearly a year," Thea reminded him. "I remember because you wrote me last year about how nervous you were about asking her out in the first place."

Thea waited for Ben to respond to that, but he just stood there awkwardly. Thea sighed. "Look, either you love her or you don't. She's making it clear to you that she wants a commitment, and if you're not ready to make a commitment to her, then you should let her go. But if you're just scared...if you know you love her, and you want to get closer to her, start heading toward marriage, then face your fears and say yes, because at some point, you're probably going to need to move forward. Women rarely will wait forever, even if they're with the right guy."

Ben was quiet for a long moment. "I do love her."

"Then it should be an easy decision-it's just getting through the fear-that's the hard part." And boy was it the hard part. While Thea wasn't in exactly the same situation as Ben was, even taking the first steps towards a relationship with someone when you had been hurt before was hard.

"And how are things with you and George?"

And there was the elephant in the room so to speak. After Liam and the other Unspeakables had been arrested, they had vowed to get to know one another better, see if they wanted to develop a relationship, but it was hard to do that when he was in London, and she was in Cambridge. She turned to face Ben. "I don't know that there is a George and me, to be honest. With the way we left things...long-distance relationships are tough," she settled on.

"Do you love him?" Ben asked, clearly not as nervous to talk about her love life as he was about his own.

Thea shook her head. "I'm still getting to know him."

"By letters?"

"He doesn't have a personal email address," she reminded him. Of course, George didn't have any email addresses since anything magical made computers-and all other electronics-go haywire, but Ben didn't know that. Ben couldn't know that, because if she told a muggle about magic, she would be violating wizarding law. "He's not big on modern technology on a personal level, and I don't want to bother him at work, so letters it is."

Ben just shook his head. "You should invite him up here to visit. I'd like to meet him."

"You'll get to," said Thea. "He's my control subject for the DNA experiment."

"Isn't that a bit unprofessional mixing work with pleasure?" Ben teased her. She could see the twinkle in his eye because he thought it was amusing.

"You have no idea," Thea told him. He really didn't. It didn't get much more personal than dating the brother of the man you managed to bring back from the dead. But again, it's not as if Thea could explain any of that to Ben.

Before Ben could think of another question to ask-or a further way to tease Thea, students began to trickle into the laboratory. "I should get going," Thea told him. "I know you've got a class." Ben waved her off, and Thea headed back to Fred, hoping that he hadn't blown up the house in the time that she had been gone.