"Tori?"
"Mmhmm?"
It's Tuesday now, and I've done a lot of scribbling in my diary. A lot of scribbling. Hieronymous is teasing me that I'm writing my own novel, but there doesn't seem like much else to do. Hieronymous says he has a special surprise for me, and is simply working out the details of it, so I let him work. What's important is that he cuddles up to me and holds me close at night, and we wake up in the mornings snuggled into each other and stay in bed until noon just snogging. What matters is that we are comfortable with each other. We can take things a step further later, but we need to establish a kind of trust first.
"Tori?"
"I said MMM," I say loudly, rolling over to face him. That's when I realize I had been leaning with my arm covering my mouth. "What's up?"
The chair that he is sitting in swivels away from his desk. "Are you still living out of your suitcase?"
"Uh," I glance over at my suitcase. "Yeah," I shrug. What brought this on?
"You do know that I moved things out of my bottom drawer so you can use it?" he asks.
"Thanks," I shrug. "But the suitcase is fine."
He sighs. "Tori, you live here now. I want you to be comfortable."
"I am comfortable," I reply. "I just, I like having all of my things together. It's just…handy. I don't know."
"Tori, the thing is an eye sore."
I sit up as I look at him. "You know this marriage is not going to be a long and happy one if you insult my luggage."
"I just mean, I don't like your suitcase just lying out in the middle of the room," he says. "Please? You're going to be living here for the next two years at the very least."
"Because you said please," I mutter. The truth was, I liked having my suitcase within arm's reach of the bed, so I didn't have to go all the way over to his dresser. And the bottom drawer? That meant I had to bend over whenever I wanted to get anything out of it, even though it was considerably bigger than the others.
Mimicking the way Ellen used to reorganize her dresser, I dump my suitcase out onto the bed, keeping the pictures of my family carefully tucked inside a zippered pouch. I'm not sure why, but I don't want Hieronymous to see my parents. He never met them, never would meet them, and it just was a part of my life that wasn't who I was anymore. I was a different Tori now. My parents would probably not even recognize me even if their memories hadn't been wiped.
I lean the almost-empty suitcase against the wall for Hieronymous to put away later and began to fold my clothes. "Want some help with that?" Hieronymous asks.
"No," I snap. "No magic."
He eyes me wearily as I sort my clothes out into various piles. A bunch of socks, mostly plain black ones for class, but a couple of fuzzy, funky colored ones for sleep time. A bunch of girl boxer briefs, which I found to be a lot more comfortable under my robes than just panties. A bunch of tank tops and camisoles which I wore under my robes for much of the same reason. After a bunch of boys had been found playing in the courtyard with some girl's bra last year, I had sworn off them. Pubescent teenager boys were far less interested in tank tops than they were in bras.
Shifting over to the other side of the bed, I fold and organize about half a dozen tee shirts, mostly ranging from black to royal blue, which a few purple ones thrown in for good measure. Three pairs of jeans, a bunch of shorts, two pairs of leggings, two pairs of sweatpants and three hoodies. And, of course, my robes.
I look up to see Hieronymous watching me intently. "Folding laundry. Riveting stuff, I know."
I magically open up the drawer and begin to cross back and forth across the room, loading stuff in. It all fits, and there's a decent amount of space left over. "Where's the rest of it?"
"The rest of what?"
"Your clothes?" he asks.
I blink at him. "You just saw me unpack."
"And that's it?" he asks. "That's all the clothes you have?"
"Yes?"
"Where's your formal wear?"
I dig into the drawer and hold out a pair of black skinny jeans and a purple tee shirt with a deep V-neck. "I mean, it's kind of formal. It looks better when it's on me." He's staring at me incredulously. "I mean, hey, at least the V-neck detracts from my sneakers." I give him a sarcastic thumbs up, but he doesn't look impressed.
"How am I supposed to take you anywhere?" he sighs.
"Take me-?" My cheeks flush scarlet as the insinuation. "Take me where?" He just shakes his head and looks away. "On a date? Are you asking me out on a date?"
"I'm not asking you anywhere in those rags," he says dismissively.
"How dare you," I snap. "These are the clothes my parents bought me."
"Tori-"
"I haven't bought hardly any new clothes since I've been here," I say. "Except for another pair of jeans, and that hoodie, and more socks, because I get holes in them from walking around in them all the time. And another pair of sneakers for Sports Club, which, as it turns out, was a smart idea, because the last ones I had seemed to be soaked through with my blood."
"Tori, I simply meant-"
"I don't care what you meant," I spit. "Like you're one to really talk? All you do is wear those robes all day or walk around shirtless."
He sighs and gets up, walking into the closet and flicking on the light. I follow him inside to see six suits hanging against the far wall. "Why? Why do you have any need for those?" I ask.
He sighs. "In case the situation calls for it."
"When would it call for it?" I ask. "You don't go anywhere."
"That does not mean one should not be prepared," he responds.
I go back to the room and scooch back onto the bed, facing him. "So you're saying you want me to get a dress?"
"I'm not saying anything," he says, holding up his hands.
"No, but you're implying something," I cross my arms over my chest as he sits back down in his chair.
"I just mean I can't take you nice places if you don't have anything nice to wear," he says finally.
"Nice places?" I echo. "Like The Glen?"
He looks back at me to see if I'm being sarcastic, but I'm honestly not trying to be sarcastic or difficult. These are my clothes. I am literally just a simple high school girl that knows magic. My mother worked part-time at a coffee shop and my father worked in a corporate office selling insurance. We weren't poor, we were just…average. And we definitely weren't British nobility. We pretty much never went out to eat, or if we did, it was to a local small-town diner, where wearing a dress was definitely overkill.
An uncomfortable silence passes between us. "Look, Tori-"
"No, it's fine," I say quickly. "It's important to have clothes for every occasion. I get it. You never know what situations could arise." I stand up and walk over to my suitcase. "I wasn't entirely honest with you. That wasn't all the clothes I have."
I open it on the floor so that he can see inside, so he can see that it's empty. I hold my hand out in one corner and utter a string of syllables underneath my breath. It's a complicated charm, but Professor Potsdam wanted to ensure that no one was able to find it. It appears in front of us and I reach out and stand up, holding the creamy white fabric against myself.
"Do you remember this?" I ask, my eyebrows raised.
The look that crosses his face is immediate as I look down and admire it. Creamy white with gossamer sleeves and blue lace to match my hair. My wedding dress.
"You still have this?" he asks, reaching out to rub the material in his fingers.
"Well, what else was I supposed to do with it?" I shrug. "Professor Potsdam said to consider it a wedding present. And Minnie gave me twenty-five dollars, so it wasn't really such a raw deal after all." I shrug. "I almost died, but instead I gained a husband that hated me, twenty-five bucks, a dress, and lunch." I think for a moment. "And dinner. Professor Potsdam wanted to make sure I wouldn't burst out in tears the second I got back to campus and draw suspicion."
"Twenty-five dollars?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "That's it?"
"I am pretty sure that was literally either all the money Minnie or Professor Potsdam had on her." I shrug. "I don't know, they said I should get some sort of gift."
He shakes his head, rubbing his lower lip with the edge of his thumb. "Tori, when I think back to how I treated you that day-"
"Don't," I say. "Don't do that. I mean, yes, it would have been nice if you were nicer to me, but maybe if you had been we wouldn't be here now. So it all worked out for the best."
He stands up and smiles down at me. "You looked beautiful in that dress."
"Well I better have," I tease. "Potsdam stuffed an apple in my mouth and made me stand perfectly still for what seemed like hours while she fitted me. Black magic is not an exact science, you know."
"Oh, the horror."
"No, I think the horror was being led down into a dungeon to get married," I say. "And then my new husband having the nerve to say that he would not demean himself to kiss me on our wedding day."
"Am I ever going to live that down?" he asks. "You know, we can always have another marriage to renew our vows in the future. If you want."
I hesitate and offer him the dress. "Then you better hang this in your closet next to your wedding robes. Because I am not getting fitted again."
"Fair enough," he says as he disappears into the closet.
"Actually, I mean, I like my dress, but your robes?" I ask. "I mean, really, fuchsia? And orange?"
He reappears a moment later. "Those colors are customary. They're traditional."
"Traditionally ugly?" I ask with a smirk.
"Please, you should have seen your face," he says with a dark glint in his eye. "You couldn't stop staring. You were drooling over me."
"Drooling?" I scoff. "Don't make me laugh. You were the one who was checking me out. I was the one who was appalled by your choice of atti-"
His lips crash against mine and I throw my arms around his neck as he kisses me deeply. We collapse backwards onto the bed and pass away the afternoon.