Chapter Four: Elemental Resonance

The work-table was covered in bits and pieces. Ral stared at them a little sullenly. Somewhere inside his head was a picture of what they should look like when they were put together, but right now it seemed fuzzy and indistinct. His brain didn't seem to want to work properly anymore, and finally he put his forehead down on the table with a clunk. "Goddammit."

"Are you having difficulty, Mr. Zarek?"

Professor Granger looked up from the potion she had been bending over, and Ral almost wished he hadn't bothered coming to his independent study today. He'd have gotten in trouble, but it might have been easier to deal with.

"No," he gritted out. Then he reached out a finger and poked at one of the bits. They were supposed to be coming together into a vaguely glove-like shape, but they just looked like little twists of metal and wood. Ral tried to recapture the desire he'd had when he'd pitched this independent study, the idea of a magical battery that would siphon energy and transmute it into electricity—basically a kind of magical transformer. The idea still tugged at him, but the feeling was muted and indistinct. All he seemed to be able to think about properly was the look on Jace's face as he gazed at Emmara, like she was the most precious thing he'd ever seen in his life. And thinking about that hurt.

Ral's stomach felt pinched and sore, and his right hand was heating up again. A tiny spark skipped from one finger over to a coil of wire on the table, and he froze. This was the last thing he needed, this stupid fucking—lightning. Stop it, Ral told himself, but the heat in his hand intensified as he focused on it.

"Mr. Zarek?" Professor Granger said again.

"I'm fine, leave me alone," Ral managed, but he knew he sounded more scared than angry at this point. There was a scraping noise as Professor Granger pushed back her chair and stood up. "I'm fine," he said again, and at least the heat in his hand seemed to lessen, but he didn't have long to be grateful for that before two tears squeezed their way out of his eyes and fell on the work-table.

"Is this something that I can help with?" Professor Granger asked gently, and Ral felt one wild moment of surging hope.

"It's Jace," he stammered out. "There's—something wrong, I think. He's been acting weird since the beginning of the year."

"Weird how?"

"He and Emmara—" Ral swallowed, swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, and managed to look up at Professor Granger. That was a mistake. He could see the moment that her brow furrowed between her eyes, and he knew what she was going to say. He knew she was going to say he was jealous, just like everybody else. "I'm not jealous!" he snarled. Heat in his hand, surging up his spine. "It's not that—I'm not even that gay!" Oh, fuck. He hadn't meant to say that. "He's under a spell, he didn't bring Kallist back with him, he…"

Even as he said it, he knew how she was going to respond. Just like everyone else, and the heat surged sudden and white and blazing, from the top of his head down the side of his arm. There was a bang that he was intimately familiar with, but it usually accompanied a purposeful spell, and lightning bolted out from the end of his hand, crackling across the face of the lab table and jumping erratically from object to object. Ral took a deep, shuddering breath. His arm was aching, a sudden, bone-deep ache that met the pinching feeling in his stomach with an unpleasant twist. Was there actually something wrong with him? Was this what Jace had felt like in first-year? "I've gotta go," he blurted, shoving himself back from the lab table as if it was a hot stove.

"Mr. Zarek—"

"I know, detention, sorry," Ral said as he reached the door. "I won't do it again. I'll make up today's work later. I can't focus."

If Professor Granger was drawing breath to say something else, he wasn't going to wait around to hear it. Ears burning, he pelted out of the study, and it wasn't until he was halfway down the stairs that he realized he didn't really have anywhere to go. He sat down on the middle step and put his head in his hands.

After a few minutes, he heard quiet footsteps behind him. "I'm not going to give you detention," Professor Granger said. "But I am worried about you, Ral. Quite honestly, you've always had trouble controlling your temper, and I don't want to see that get worse."

"Yeah," Ral muttered. "Sorry. Just a bad day."

"Do you want to actually talk about it?" He raised and lowered one shoulder. Professor Granger sighed. "I know you know that kind of behavior is unacceptable."

But I didn't mean to, Ral wanted to protest. He swallowed it, because it was a stupid, useless kind of thing to say. Instead, he just made a soft, assenting noise.

"Why don't you go back to your dorm for the time being?" Professor Granger suggested. "We can talk about it when you're feeling better."

How about never? Oh, god, he'd basically outed himself to a teacher in the Wizarding World. Ral knew his parents wouldn't give a fuck if he was gay, but the Muggle world was a lot more accepting about certain things, as far as he could tell. What if he got expelled for being gay? What if—shut up, he told his brain fiercely. He'd been babbling. She probably hadn't even heard him. Besides, what was important was that Jace was under a fucking spell, and no one was going to believe him, because they all thought he was fucking jealous.

"Sure," he said, taking a deep breath. "Yeah. I'll go lie down. Maybe I caught the bug that's going around the girls' dorm."

"Maybe," Professor Granger said. "Well, Ral, I'll see you later."

"See you." His arm was still aching.

Chandra flung herself down onto Elspeth's bed with a yawn. "I'm so tired," she announced. "I just want to sleep for a week."

Elspeth patted her arm. "You'll have to wait for the holidays like everybody else."

"It's this stupid bug," Chandra complained. "And of course I'm the only Gryffindor to have come down with it so far."

"So is Gideon expected to catch it soon then?" Tamiyo put in archly from across the room. Everyone knew he fancied Chandra, but no one was quite sure if Chandra reciprocated or not.

Chandra glared across the room, grabbed Elspeth's pillow, and flung it angrily. Her aim was off, and it bounced gently against Emmara's head. The French girl looked up with a gasp from the book she had been reading, then laughed.

"Sorry!" Chandra called. "Wasn't aiming for you."

Sitting up, Emmara sent the pillow whizzing back across the room, almost knocking Chandra off the bed. "Got you back anyway," she said with a grin. Elspeth still didn't really know what to think of her. She tended to be rather quiet and private—and she spent a lot of time with Jace.

Elspeth was trying very hard to judge Emmara for her own qualities and not fall into the trap of disliking her because she took Jace's time away from Elspeth and Ral. It wouldn't be fair to Emmara if both of them gave her the cold shoulder, and it was obvious that Ral wasn't going to be objective. Elspeth was sympathetic, she was just also—tired. She wished she could talk to Jace or Ral about this, but Ral was definitely not going to be much use right now.

"Say, Emmara," Chandra said lazily. "What was it like, being Sorted as a sixth year?"

Emmara shrugged. "Probably the same as it would have been as a first-year, I suppose."

"Couldn't you have asked them to Sort you not at the ceremony?" Nissa put in. "It must have felt very odd, being the only one who wasn't a child."

"I suppose." Emmara leaned back over a sheet of paper that was probably her homework. "I didn't think it was necessary to bother." She paused, tilting her head to one side. "It was quite fun."

"Did they have anything like it at your old school?" Elspeth asked, trying to get herself interested in the conversation. She probably ought to be doing her homework, but she felt almost as tired as Chandra looked.

"Not really." Emmara looked up again, favoring Elspeth with a tight, slightly nervous smile. "You're one of Jace's friends, aren't you, Elspeth? I mean, one of his close friends?"

Was she jealous? Elspeth nodded. "Yeah," she said awkwardly. "We've known each other for a while."

"I only met him a few months ago, but I like him so much." Elspeth wasn't sure what her tone of voice signified. Something about the way she spoke seemed a little unusual, but it was probably the accent. Maybe just the fact that English presumably wasn't her first language. "I just wondered if you have any advice."

"Advice?" Elspeth echoed in confusion.

"Things he likes for presents, that sort of thing…"

Chandra snorted something into Elspeth's pillow. "What did you say?" Emmara asked, and Chandra looked up with a shrug.

"I said, I still can't believe he's straight."

Emmara's eyebrows went up, and Elspeth shifted uncomfortably. This was not a conversation she wanted to be having right now. Or ever, preferably. Emmara shrugged and didn't seem as if she was going to answer, which meant Elspeth was at least off the hook for now. Then Chandra spoke again, "So, are you positive, Emmara?"

"Positive of what?"

"Chandra," Elspeth said, "shut up."

"That's he's straight."

"I don't think that is any of your business," Emmara said mildly, turning back to her book. "If I am happy, and he is happy, that is all that matters, no?"

"No," Chandra said loudly, and Elspeth put a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't," she said, quietly. "Emmara hasn't done anything."

"Well, Jace has!" snapped Chandra. "He went and broke Ral's heart, and you know it!"

The room went suddenly quiet, and Elspeth tried to figure out what the right thing to say was. Finally, she settled for, "They weren't dating, you know."

Chandra gave her a look. "They weren't dating anyone," she said pointedly. "You know they were going to be a thing. Everybody knew they were going to be a thing."

On the other bed, Emmara shrugged. "Jace didn't seem to think so," she said. "If Ral never said anything, that's his loss."

As Chandra started to get up, Elspeth put a hand on her arm. "Come on, Chandra," she said. "We're all worried about Ral, but Emmara's right. And it's definitely not her fault. Ral will—" she swallowed, thinking about his face the last time she'd seen it, "—he'll be fine after a little while."

Chandra flung herself back down on the bed with a wordless noise and muttered something into the pillow, but Elspeth decided not to probe what it was. Her friend could be very rude when she wanted to be. She sighed. It was definitely not going to be an easy semester, and she was so tired she didn't even want to look at her homework yet.

Jace was worried about Ral. For some reason, ever since the encounter in the bathroom at the Hogwarts Express, he'd barely seen him. Ral seemed to be slipping in late to class and then was always the first one out, so he never managed to catch him then. And, Jace thought a little guiltily, he had been sharing his bed with Emmara at night, and he hadn't been able to explain himself to Ral.

Not that he needed to, of course. They didn't have an agreement or anything, but it was just that it was something they had done a lot up until this year, and maybe it was kind of a dick move to stop doing it without even letting Ral know about it. But, Jace thought, when would he have had the chance, anyway? He sighed.

"Are you all right, Jace?" Emmara asked from beside him, and he nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You seem distracted."

"Mmm, I guess I am, a little." Shaking his head, he tried to focus on the Quidditch game, instead. It was Elspeth's first year as captain, so it was very important that he cheer her on. Of course, the fact that this was a Hufflepuff versus Slytherin match just made everything more awkward.

In the air above them, Elspeth executed a flawless turn, snatched the Quaffle out of a surprised Seeker's hands—a fifth-year Slytherin named Vraska—and sent it spinning through the goal hoops. Jace got to his feet, cheering so hard that he actually started to cough.

"Here, have a drink," Emmara said, her voice amused, as she pushed the flask she always carried into his hands.

"Thanks," Jace said. The water was especially sweet on his tongue today, and he sighed as he sat back down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and passing it back to her. She was so beautiful that he had to pause for a minute, feeling somewhat small and grubby beside her pale-skinned loveliness. "Um," he said. "Can I kiss you?"

Emmara smiled sweetly. "Of course." She fluffed her ash-blond hair and leaned forward.

"Ugh!" Hermione flung herself down into the squashiest armchair in the teachers' lounge. She must be in an especially bad mood, Draco mused, since she generally preferred to perch on the side of one of the harder chairs, certainly not sink down into the squashy chair as if she were trying to keep going through the floor.

"Everything all right?" he asked her, putting down the book he had been reading.

"The sixth-years are impossible, I'm worried about Luna, and I just got a letter from Ron, so no. Nothing is all right," Hermione complained.

"I suppose the last uneventful semester couldn't last," Draco said thoughtfully. "Is Mr. Zarek causing you trouble?"

"Concern, really, to be fair," Hermione answered. "He almost seems as if he's losing control of his magic."

"More than usual, you mean?"

"I don't mean his tendency to fly off the handle. I mean he cast a lightning spell yesterday without his wand, and I don't think he meant to."

"Hm," Draco said. "Well, Mr. Zarek certainly does have a way with lightning. Are you sure he didn't mean to?"

"I'm not quite certain, no, but it did seem like it." She sighed. "I suppose I can just keep an eye on him for now. He seems to be awfully worried about Jace as well."

"Jace is giving Harry a headache, but I think it's just normal teenage hormones." Draco shifted in his seat. "What's this about Ron sending you a letter?"

Flinging her arms over the leg of the chair, which was even more unusual for her, Hermione dug in the pocket of her robe and pulled out a piece of parchment. "Here," she said stiffly, then cleared her throat. " 'Dear Hermione,'" she began, then wilted. "Oh, I can't. It's not—there's nothing wrong with it, it's a perfectly reasonable letter, I just don't know how to talk to him!"

"Well, I'm sure you're aware he's not my favorite person," Draco drawled. He had never had any great love for the youngest Weasley boy, although he had tried to temper his initial dislike after the war. The incident between Hermione and Ron had not improved matters, however, and he had given up on trying after finding Hermione crying in an alcove one too many times.

"Yes, and I think that's completely reasonable." Hermione briskly flicked a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. "I just…we were such good friends. He knows he behaved—well—awfully. I want to forgive him. I just don't know how. I don't want him to think I have any desire whatsoever to get back together with him."

"Well, have you?" Draco drawled. She had oscillated quite a bit in the time after the breakup, muttering about 'poor Ron' and 'such good times originally', though, as far as he knew, the Weasley brat didn't know about any of that.

"No." Hermione spoke with a level of firmness Draco had rarely heard her apply to this particular topic. "No, I very much do not."

Something about her voice made him look up. A faint pink tinged the top of her ears and splashed across her cheeks. "Is there someone else?" he asked, with a faintly predatory grin.

"No—I mean—I don't—" Hermione floundered helplessly. "That is, I—" She paused. "Oh dear," she said, at last. "Er, well, I suppose there might be. But I don't think that—" very long pause indeed, "—I don't think that the person is likely to feel the same way about me, and I hadn't even, well, really realized that until you asked just now."

Draco shrugged. "Well, you won't know unless you ask," he said pragmatically, but before he could try to probe any further, the door slammed open and Harry stalked in. Brows drawn down and his robes swirling around him, he almost seemed to draw the colors out of the rest of the room. Draco found himself having to take a deep breath, and then wondered where that had come from.

"Good…evening, Harry?" Hermione ventured tentatively.

"Merlin's fucking beard," Harry said, starting toward the squashy armchair and pausing when he saw it was already occupied. Draco had to hide a smile. Apparently everyone's response to a bad day was throwing themselves down into that particular armchair. He had to admit, he'd been guilty of it himself before.

Thwarted, Harry shoved his hands in the pockets of his robes and began to pace. "The sixth-years are bloody impossible this year," he groaned. "After last year, I really thought we were going to have a little peace with that crowd."

"What happened this time?" Draco asked mildly.

"Ral skipped DADA this morning, and when I went to find him later, I caught him laying lightning traps around our new transfer student's bed. How he got into the Hufflepuff girls' dormitory, I don't know."

"Oh, Merlin," Hermione groaned. "What kind of traps?"

"I don't think they would have hurt her much," Harry said, slowly. "Certainly, I think he just wanted to make her uncomfortable. But when I caught him, he tried to shock me as well."

Draco frowned. "Did he realize it was you?" he asked.

"I don't know." Harry shrugged. "I think it was an automatic reaction, but it's still—concerning. Without more control, he could seriously injure someone with a spell like that."

"What did you do?" Hermione asked, but before Harry could answer, the door opened yet again, and Luna Lovegood entered the room, twirling her hair absently with one hand.

"I don't think you should assume he was trying," she said mildly. Draco, Harry, and Hermione paused and blinked at her in confusion. "Oh," her mild-eyed stare slid around the room, pausing on the squashy armchair just as everyone else's had, "I just overheard the last bit of the conversation. And I was just wondering if Ral might be an elementalist."

"A what?" Harry asked.

"Well, they're more common in Eastern Europe and Russia, I believe," Luna said calmly. "Probably the school system in Britain is too rigid for them, or maybe there's something about the heredity. But Ral's family are immigrants, aren't they?"

"Yes," Hermione supplied, sounding as confused as Draco.

"Well, then." Luna nodded to herself. "He's probably got an affinity for lightning, I imagine. Elementalists sometimes have more trouble with control than more generalist wizards do." She cocked her head to one side. "You might keep an eye on Chandra, as well. She does seem to set her plants on fire quite a lot, and she's half Indian, you know. It's also more common in India, I think, though I haven't spent much time there."

"Merlin," Draco groaned. "You mean half of the sixth years are natively bad at controlling their magic?"

"Actually it's only about seven and a half percent." Luna smiled, and Hermione choked out a surprised laugh. "I suppose that's higher than the usual, though."

"I gave him a detention," Harry said, with a sigh.

"Why don't I take it?" Luna suggestly brightly. "I'll give him some books about elementalism to read. I'm sure he'd like that. He's always got good questions. Very curious boy. I like him."

"Yeah, please," Harry said. "Jace has been racking up detentions as well, and he shouldn't be. He's a sixth-year, they're supposed to be a bit more responsible."

"You mean like we were?" Draco said, with a wicked grin. "Wasn't sixth-year the year you were sneaking around with an ex-Death-Eater's potion book?"

"Shut up." Harry's voice was harsh, but he laughed. "All right, so maybe I'm expecting a little much, but Merlin's beard. I've got so much sympathy for all our professors now."

Luna perched herself on the arm of the squashy armchair, a little hesitantly. "You don't mind?" she asked Hermione, who stared for a moment, then shook her head.

Draco glanced from one of them to the other. Hm. "Does anyone want to watch a movie?" he asked. "I think we've all had as much of the students as we can take, and since Mr. Zarek was kind enough to get a TV working for us, we might as well use it."

"Excuse me," Hermione said. "I did most of the work on that."

Draco just grinned at her and winked, and she blew out her cheeks and huffed at him, but the expression turned into a smile.

Elspeth gnawed on her lip and stared down at the parchment on her bed, clicking and unclicking the ball-point pen she'd brought back from summer at the Zareks'. It was so much more practical than a quill. For what had to be the umpteenth time, she looked up at the little photograph she had pinned over her bed. Her pen-pal gave her a small smile and a tiny wave, and her stomach turned over.

Groaning, she ground her face into her pillow. When she'd been at Ral's house, it hadn't seemed so strange, but now that she was back at Hogwarts, it was very odd to be imagining kissing another girl. Especially now that she had actually seen a picture of said girl, because the image seemed to have got stuck in her head; she kept coming back to it at horribly inopportune times. It wasn't that odd, surely? Ral's parents had even asked if she had a girlfriend or a boyfriend at one point. But before then, it hadn't really occurred to her. She'd barely even realized that it was a thing.

She sighed. She was never going to be able to write the next letter if she couldn't settle her nerves a bit. Maybe if she went to talk to Chandra about it—Chandra's family was split between Indian wizards and British Muggles, so she'd presumably have a different perspective, and, in any case, she was one of Elspeth's closest friends. Elspeth might have gone to Ral or Jace first, but Ral was basically refusing to talk and also far too stressed, and she couldn't seem to catch Jace at a time when his mouth wasn't occupied with Emmara's. Which really was getting to be a bit much, she thought. At least he could stop doing it where Ral could see him. He had to know, didn't he? Well, maybe not. Jace had never been very perceptive.

Anyways, time to find Chandra. She got out of bed and sucked in a sudden, nauseated breath. Colored dots swirled in front of her eyes, and the next moment she was leaning against the wall, pain sparking through her hand where she'd fallen against it. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and shook her head. This stupid virus was really starting to cause problems. Maybe she should go to Madam Pomfrey, but the Quidditch match against Gryffindor was coming up in a few days, and that was the last important one for a while. If she could just make it a few more days, then she could go to the Hospital Wing guilt free.

She waited another minute or two for her head to stop spinning, and then she set off for Gryffindor. Chandra was usually in the common room at this time of day if she wasn't doing her homework with the rest of her friends in the Hufflepuff dorm, but it was quite a lazy, sleepy late afternoon, so perhaps she'd fallen asleep.

Elspeth was breathing annoyingly hard by the time she had checked the Gryffindor common room and found no one and was heading up to the girls' dorm. This stupid fatigue. She just needed to get better already. When she entered the room, she had to pause again to lean against the wall, but when her head stopped spinning, she was able to hear low voices and giggling coming from Chandra's bed.

Pausing for a moment, Elspeth considered. Maybe she should wait. But both voices were female, so she wasn't likely to catch Chandra doing anything too embarrassing, and most of Chandra's close friends were hers as well, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to pull Chandra away for a minute to ask for her advice. She bounced nervously on the balls of her feet for a minute before heading over to Chandra's bed and pulling back the curtains around it.

"Um, Chandra, can I talk to you for a mi—"

Elspeth felt her jaw literally drop as she stared. Chandra was on her bed, her robes carelessly piled in a heap on the floor, shirt half-unbuttoned, tie flung sideways across one shoulder. Her knees were on either side of Nissa's waist, and Nissa herself was wearing absolutely nothing on her top half. The two looked up, and Nissa froze as Elspeth spoke. Chandra went slightly pink. "Now isn't actually, um…can it wait?" she asked, as Nissa frantically reached behind herself and grabbed a pillow to cover her chest.

"I'm so sorry!" Elspeth squeaked, her voice going high and scratchy.

"If it's really important, I can—" Chandra cleared her throat. "I mean, um…"

"No! I think you just answered my question!" Elspeth babbled. "It's fine, I'll tell you later, everything's fine, I'm sorry, please just go back to what you were doing." She backed away, letting the curtain fall back into place. As she hurried out of the room, she heard Chandra and Nissa starting to giggle nervously.

She leaned against the wall outside again. Well, she thought, rather shamefacedly, that had been incredibly stupid, but she supposed she had an answer to her question. Thinking 'it won't be embarrassing because there isn't a boy in there' when she was literally coming to ask Chandra about the feasibility of having a crush on a girl had been pretty silly. But at least now she knew for sure that Chandra wouldn't find it odd. And neither would Nissa, presumably. And maybe that was all she needed. She blushed slightly again at the glimpse she'd gotten of Nissa's breasts, and found herself wondering a little guiltily what her pen pal would look like if she slid the robes off her shoulders and—

Time for a cold shower. Then she could go back to trying to finish this letter.