Apparently, the teachers had been living in the lap of luxury all this time, and I just never knew it.

I mean, I knew that teachers didn't exactly eat in our cafeteria, but I figured they were required to eat from their own staff cafeteria if they ever wanted food. I didn't know that they could basically order from their own personal kitchen and get the food delivered to their door any time they wanted. I remembered how Professor Potsdam had asked me to bring soup up to his door when he was sick last year, but I figured that was a special request sort of thing. I didn't realize that it was such a common occurrence.

"I should probably head back to my room, eventually," I say over my breakfast of eggs and toast. "I'm just not ready to face my roommates yet."

"Apparently Potsdam was lying to me," Hieronymous offers. "Although I suppose this more of a common occurrence than I would care to admit. She said she wiped your roommate's memories, but she didn't wipe them. She shielded them."

"Does that mean that they could have been in just as much danger of getting stuck as me?" I ask and he shakes his head. "I'm guessing hers was a lot more powerful than Damien's."

"She is extremely powerful, Tori, I don't want you to ever forget that," he warns. "Remember, she wants you to be her friend. She wants to be everyone's friend. It keeps people from suspecting too much."

"Suspecting?" I ask, but he shakes his head. "No, no, I mean, no, don't tell me. It's not my place to know."

He pauses for a moment. "I would've thought you would have put up more of a fight. Apparently you can be subject to reason."

I wrinkle up my face and stick my tongue out at him. "You said she was watching me everywhere, right? If so, I have no desire to get on the bad side of someone who is more powerful than Damien. I don't intend to get on anyone's bad side."

"Except mine."

"Well, you, you're special."

"Oh, lucky me."

I still couldn't believe the amount of snark that was passing between us on a regular basis. It was like he was seeing me more as an equal than just a silly child. "Is she still going to be watching me?" I ask cautiously.

"Pretend she is watching you around the clock," he replies.

"Except in here, right?" I ask with a smirk, and he sighs.

"While I wouldn't put it past that wretched woman, no, I do believe that in here we are entitled to our privacy," he says.

"Oh no," I say, my face sinking into my hands. He watches me carefully, his eyes alert. "They know, don't they?" He just raises an eyebrow at me. "Last year when Damien tried to suck the soul out of that freshman, everybody knew about it. So people know about that? And us?"

"And you," he replies curtly. "Word does seem to travel fast around magical communities."

"Oh great," I sink in my seat. "This is going to be worse than last year."

"Was last year really so terrible?" he asks in earnest.

"You read my diary, you tell me," I retort, and he considers this.

"Well, you did use some very colorful language," he replies. "And to be fair, despite my warnings, I did hear a fair amount of gossip, but I never thought it would affect you so strongly."

"It's not the rumors that bother me," I say. "I don't care what people think, really, I don't. I had people asking me all sorts of inappropriate questions at first and sure it was annoying but it wasn't so bad. But then after a while people just sort of started avoiding me, even Ellen. Like I would come in and she would leave the room; she just wouldn't talk to me at all."

"Yes, I recall."

"And that was when, you know, it was just us being married. She wouldn't talk to me because of that. Damien could have seriously hurt her, or worse. And all of this stuff was happening to me and I didn't tell her or Virginia anything. I put them in serious danger and they could have been really hurt."

"They could have been in more in danger if you had told them," he says patiently. "Don't blame yourself for that."

"You're right," I look up at him seriously. "I blame myself for their memories being messed with. They suffered just because they were my roommates, and that's my fault. They're not going to forgive me for that."

"They didn't suffer," he says. "Their memories were shielded. They were never in any pain, and they were never in the kind of danger you were in."

"But now they have to live with that," I argue, my voice becoming more and more frantic. "They have to live with the fact that their memories were messed with. Are their memories real? Fake? Were their memories wiped and these are just fake memories put in their place? Are certain memories shielded from them? If so, who shielded them? Why would they shield them? What if-?"

"Tori-" Hieronymous says sharply, and I look up at him immediately, trying to casually hug the stone around my neck with my fist. My heart is racing and I try to softly take deep breaths in and out without drawing too much attention to myself.

"It's fine," I say. "I'm fine." He just looks at me like he's not quite sure.

"You don't have to be fine," he says quietly.

"Yeah, I do," I say quickly. "I just-" I run my hand through my hair, irritated, and he gives me a few minutes to collect myself. "I think you know," I say after a few minutes. He gives me a strange look, but doesn't say anything, doesn't ask to elaborate, but I am pretty sure he casts an empathy spell on me as a familiar look passes over his face.

"Didn't I warn you about becoming bitter before your time?" he murmurs.

"I'm not bitter," I scoff. "I'm nervous and I'm hesitant and I'm afraid, but I'm not bitter." I cross my arms over my chest. "And don't give me that because I saw your face this morning. You are not bitter either. You are secretly a very happy person when you want to be."

"Yes, well." His familiar demeanor is back, but I'm not quite sure if I'm glad to see it. "Hopefully your roommates will not hold too much ill will towards you."

"Yeah," I shrug.

"You'll have to face them eventually," he says pointedly.

"Can I stay with you?" I ask, like a little kid asking for an extended bedtime. "Just for a little longer? I just want time by myself, to think, and I don't know. I'm not ready to go out there yet. I feel like I haven't actually been me since the year started, and I haven't had any time to spend with you either. I just want like a solid week to either be just by myself or with you or both, I don't know."

"Spring break is next week," he informs me.

"Yeah, but I don't know if I'm going home to my-" The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop them. He looks seriously alarmed and I sigh, rubbing my temple with the edge of my sleeve as if I'm wiping off dirt.

"Nevermind," I sigh. "I guess with everything else going on, I just sort of forget that there is no home for me anymore." He's silent for a long while, so I decide to change the subject. "I don't know what classes I should take this week."

"You don't have to go to class," he reminds me. "You can always study or go to the gym."

I groan as I hold my head in my hands. "Why do I have to have a problem with everything? I don't want to stay in because I have all of next week off and I need something to take my mind off everything. I don't want to take blue magic because you're there, sorry, but I just think we should give it at least a week. I don't want to take red magic because of Jason and him telling me to stay away from you just seems really weird right now considering he knew I'm your wife, plus he gave me detention, and I don't know if I trust Potsdam enough right now to take one of her classes. Plus I don't want to go to the gym. That's where this whole thing just went down. My blood is still probably seeped into the floorboards or something."

I sigh. He's just giving me this incredulous stare across the table. "You know what, I should go, get out of your hair."

"Tori, sit," he says. I hadn't even stood up yet. "Tori, I don't pretend to know how hard this has been for you, or how hard it is going to be. But as your husband, I want you to know-"

"That you're there for me?" I ask sarcastically. "Can't you be there for me because you're a nice person and not just because you're my husband?"

"Have you met me?" he asks. I can tell he's looking for a witty retort, but I'm in no mood to give one.

"Yes," I sigh. "Can you kiss me again? I think that will help me feel better."

He nods and I stand up and slide into his lap, straddling him, wrapping my arms around his neck, letting my hands run through his hair. He puts one hand one my lower back and one hand around the nape of my neck, holding me to him. We sit like that for a while, just kissing each other gently. "I am going to get nothing done today," he murmurs against my lips.

"Not true," I say, scooting off his lap and lying down across his bed. "I'll stay here and keep myself busy, you go do whatever you need to do." He hesitates for a moment. "Hey, just like last summer, right? You do your work and I just keep myself busy."

He hesitates for a moment. "Tori?"

"Hieronymous?"

"Did you actually like spending time with me last summer?" he asks. "Did you like just sitting here, reading, while I worked? Or was it just a way to spend time with me?"

I blink at him. This I was not expecting. "I like it," I say, trying to keep my tone even. "I mean, I do want to, you know, do stuff with you too, but I like it. I stay in my room a lot, you know. Reading. Thinking. Despite my existence as a silly teenage girl, I think our hobbies are quite similar. Like, if I wasn't sitting on your bed reading here, I'd be sitting on my bed reading there. And I like being close to you." I smirk at him. "And this way you can keep an eye on me. So you know I'm not getting into trouble."

"Yes, well, I can't exactly argue with that," he says, but he still looks deep in thought as he ventures over to his desk to start working.

"Wait, before you start, do you still have it?" I ask. "My diary?"

He doesn't answer. Instead he just gets up and goes to his bookcase. He holds out his hand in front of a blue book, says something under his breath, and my diary immediately slides into his hand from out of thin air. How did he do that?

"Well, I guess I should be grateful that you're keeping it safe," I say.

"You're going to read your diary?" he asks dubiously. "Or are you asking for it back?"

"No, it was a gift to you," I say. "Besides, it's safe here with you. Considering you stole in from my room once-"

"Potsdam stole it from your room," he corrects me.

"Potsdam read my diary?" I blurt out in a flush of anger. He sighs and scratches the back of his head.

"That was more the reaction I was expecting when I told you I had your diary," he says.

"Yeah, but the diary was about you," I say. "It's like, one long love letter or something." I blush. "No, she has no right to know that stuff."

"Tori, she knows everything on campus," he says. "But we've had this conversation. I have to get back to work."

I let him go. Suddenly I don't want to read my diary, especially when I didn't know who else had touched these pages. But I had to. I had to read it. I had to make sure my memory was intact, and so I read through every entry, trying to link each one back to a specific memory in my mind. I laugh at some memories, like how Hieronymous bought me chai after the Thanksgiving candle sale. That was our first official date. I blush at other memories, like how we both thought about each over the Christmas blessing, but I have to stop when I get to January 25. Our anniversary.

I can't help but grit my teeth when I read over the passage about how Hieronymous had refused to kiss me on our wedding day because he didn't want to demean himself. I didn't write what I was really thinking about that in the diary, thankfully, but I did write a longer passage beneath it talking about my confused feelings about being married to him. I close the book shut and gently rap myself on my forehead out of embarrassment.

"Something the matter?" he asks lightheartedly.

"Oh, I would tell you, but I don't think I want to demean myself," I huff, crossing my arms over my chest.

An embarrassed smile floats to his face. "I hope you know that I did that for your benefit."

"My benefit?" I ask.

"Would you have preferred our first kiss to be in front of Potsdam and Miss Cochran?"

My face flushes. "But you weren't planning on kissing me at all."

He simply shrugs and goes back to his work. I sigh and open up my diary. "I am not opposed to the way things turned out."

"I-" I can feel a blush spreading across my cheeks. "Well, neither am I." I can see the way he's looking at me so I quickly pick up my diary again. "Excuse me, sir, but I believe you have some work to get done."

He chuckles as he gets back to his work, but I spend a long time just staring at the one page of my diary, staring through it. Is that the real reason why he didn't kiss me? And honestly, did it even matter? We had kissed and done so much more just over the past few days, one kiss didn't seem like anything. But it had been our wedding kiss. Wasn't it supposed to be important?

Nope. Our marriage was unconventional, our relationship was unconventional, and everything about us was unconventional. Time would only tell, of course, but if we were together, I don't care how it happened; only that it did.

Around nine o'clock I get up to stretch my legs. Hieronymous looks like he's busy grading work, so I simply disappear into the bathroom and put my clothes on. They're still covered in sand, so I do as much as I can to keep the mess contained. If I dumped sand all over his bathroom, Hieronymous may never invite me back. At first I think I'm okay, I think that I can do this, until I put on my still-slightly-wet and torn-up hoodie. Actually, now that I realize it, the shirt underneath is torn too, revealing a section of my midriff on the side. With my hair mussed from rolling around on the bed, and my damp, torn clothes, I look like I just came out of a battle.

"I should be getting back," I say as I trudge out of the bathroom. He looks surprised to see me with my normal clothes back on. "You still got work to do and I don't want to overstay my welcome."

He hesitates. "You are more than welcome to stay here another night-"

I sigh. "I know. But um, if I'm spending all of Spring Break with you anyway-"

He narrows his eyes at me. "All of Spring-"

"I thought-" I shrug. "Sorry, I thought I mentioned to you that I wanted…nevermind, I'll just-"

"Tori," he sighs, then seems to collect himself. "I would be more than happy to have you here for Spring Break."

"But?" I ask, and he raises an eyebrow at me. "Oh, I thought there was a but coming."

"With everyone off campus, I simply felt that you might feel safer in my company," he says, and that's when I know he definitely has used empathy on me.

"Thank you," I say softly. "But for now, I need to go try to work things out with my roommates." I spread my arms in front of him. "How do I look?"

"Terrible," he admits.

"Oh, good, that's what I was going for," I say with a sigh as I look down at my hoodie. "And this was my favorite hoodie."

"Tori, you know you can always-"

"No magic," I shake my head. "No, I plan on burning this entire outfit." He gives me a look and I shrug. "I'm only half joking. Now instead of looking at this as the hoodie my parents gave me for my sixteenth birthday, all I see is, 'look, this is the hoodie you almost died in.' Besides, I don't exactly have parents anymore, so it's not like they're going to know."

I suddenly frown up at him. "Wait, if my parents don't know I exist, what happened to my room at home? How are they still paying for me to go to school here?"

He waves his hand dismissively. "There's a whole department that takes care of Magical Reassignment, I really don't know too much about it, but your parents are still paying for your education. They think it's set up as a donation to something or other-" He shrugs. It doesn't matter to him. Of course it doesn't matter to him. He's not a wildseed, he wouldn't understand.

I want to ask him about Violet. What happened to her parents? Did she forget them too? Did she want to? But I can't ask that. I can never ask that, so I push it to the corner of my mind. I shouldn't even be thinking about her around him. I shouldn't think about her at all. He seems to catch the look on my face. "Do you miss your home?"

"I mean, I had a killer CD collection." I shrug. Aside from clothes and my laptop and a few books and stuffed animals, there's nothing else there that I would really miss. Everything that was essential I had packed with me.

"You like music?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.

"I love music," I say. "But uh, my music is a bit, louder, than your music, I think. You know, guitar riffs, and all that."

"Ah."

"But that's in the past," I shrug. "Old life, old Tori, so I should probably get out of her clothes."

"Just-" he hesitates then sighs. "I know you are struggling right now. I understand what that's like. But don't be so quick to disregard your past. Something may yet be of some use to you."

I know he's speaking from experience, and idly I wonder how much of his past he let go of. How much of it he had to take back. "Yeah, well, wish me luck with my roommates. I'm going to need it."

He cups my face in his hands and kisses me delicately. "You have my luck, but you're not going to need it."

"Yeah," I sigh. "Cause believe me, if I survived all this just for my roommates to kill me, I am going to be pissed."