Hide and seek

Valerie, Deborah and Sev arrived at the Refuge of the Space of Forgotten Sorcery, there were clouds and clearings and it was very windy.

Deborah said, "You guys to your own, I'm going to organize what I brought."

"Do you want me to show you on the map where the pool is?" Sev asked her.

"No, Prince. Let me fend for myself, I'm going to enjoy it a lot."

"Okay, first of all, let's all drink water from the well again."

"Yes, that yes."

They drew water from the well and drank.

"How long do you want me to leave you alone?" Deborah asked.

"I don't know.Valerie, what do you say?" Sev asked.

"What time is it?" Valerie asked.

"Quarter to five."

"We have enough with two hours, right?"

"I think so, even if you want to do it twice," he replied.

"Booff... Not twice, I want to be in shape for Deborah too, with her it's going to cost me more."

"Then we have plenty with two hours."

"Well, but we can do more things, right?Chat, be together," Valerie suggested.

"Of course."

"Sure, besides, I don't have time for anything in two hours," said Deborah.

"Then come at dinner time and we'll have dinner together."

"Good idea. If you're still at work, leave me a sign in the window, Valerie, as we agreed."

"Sure, sweetheart," she replied.

"Take toilet paper, then leave it in the living room."

"Thank you, pretty, I'm going to the bathroom."

Valerie went to use the outhouse and Deborah went into the house. Sev stayed waiting, when Valerie came out he went. When he came out, she was no longer out of the house, he went to wash his hands in the water that had been left in the bucket. He entered the house, there was no one in the large room, he looked into the living room, Deborah was with the map and the dictionary.

"And Valerie?" he asked her.

"No idea, Prince," Deborah responded. "Ask her."

"Valerie, where are you?" he asked her bonded.

"I'm playing hide and seek, my love," said Valerie, playfully.

They laughed.

"You'll see how soon I'll find you.I'llTrack you and it's over," Sev said.

"No..." pitifully. "Look for me, don't cheat…"

They laughed again.

"Was this part of the surprise, Deborah?" he asked.

"Not at all, this is her thing," she responded.

"Valerie, hide well, there I go."

Sev went straight up to the bedrooms and opened them all. He didn't find her, not even in the bathtub rooms.

"Valerie, where are you? Are you out of the house?"

"If I tell you, it's no longer funny."

"Damn how funny you are making me," angry. "Weren't you in such a hurry?I'm going to Track you."

"No... please, look for me…" she asked, pitifully again. "I'll give you a clue, I'm inside the house."

"Okay…" patient.

Sev went down to the kitchen, which was where he hadn't looked.

"Valerie, you're not inside the house, you're driving me crazy," impatient.

"Yes, I am…" pitiful. "What happens is that you are not searching well."

"Valerie, I give up.Tell me where you are," authoritative.

"Come on, it's very fun to play hide and seek."

"For me it was never fun. The Muggle school kids bullied me, it doesn't bring back good memories."

"Come on, I'll give you another clue, I'm on the top floor," she said.

"I'm going there."

He went back up. This time he went into each bedroom on the left and looked under all the beds.

"Valerie, I'm really fed up," exasperated. "When I find you, my desire for everything will have passed."

"Come on, honey, it's not that difficult..." sad.

He started with the ones on the right, when he reached the bathtub rooms again he looked into them and saw Valerie lying at the bottom of one.

"I found you!" Sev exclaimed out loud.

He got inside it with her and threw himself on top of her, they were dying of laughter.

"Have you seen how fun it was?" she asked, excited.

"Yes, yes it is, you're right," he too.

"You have to go back to the childhood you didn't have," sweet.

"Thank you, Valerie, for playing with me like that," sad.

"Of course, sweetheart, you have to let yourself go." She was caressing him with great tenderness. "I'm so happy.You have changed my life."

"And you mine, Valerie, I am also much happier since I am with you. I had never laughed so much in my life."

"Come let me hug you, let's talk for a little while."

He snuggled into the crook of her shoulder, she caressed his face and kissed his head.

"Something you told us before shocked me," she began. "I have been worried."

"What, Valerie?"

"That in November you fell into a depression, while you were already with Lily, as a result of something you said that you didn't want to remember. Do you want to tell me?"

"Buff... I don't know if I really want to, to be honest. Remember how we got when I told you about the mill."

"I know it sweetheart," she said. "But you have to let out everything that hurts you, and I don't have many opportunities to be alone with you.Better that we do it now than later, now we are rested and we will not fall asleep, and then we will forget all the sorrows."

"Okay, I'll tell you."

"That's how I like it."

He gave her a background and then showed her the essence of what he considered one of the worst days of his life when it should have been one of the best, that day of the fight with Lily in the Prince's Haven. He also gave her a summary of the two weeks that followed, until he met Lily again at the Astronomy Tower and they shared their first kiss. They both cried a lot.

"Ugh... sweetheart... you only ate once a day…" Valerie lamented.

"Yes, I lost a lot of weight."

"And Lily didn't realize?"

"Not until she saw me up close a week later in Potions class," Sev answered.

"And the vipers? You were still hanging out with them then."

"Well, hanging out with them... I went and came from classes and little else, I barely stopped at home."

"But you went to Hogsmeade with them in October and November, I remember seeing you all in town," she said. "And if you were only going to eat once a day, they must have worried about you."

"They never cared about me, Valerie, they were never my friends. On the Hogsmeade outings you mention, we went to Hog's Head and I didn't take anything. I had no money and they didn't even deign to buy me a butterbeer, being stuffed with money."

"How bad they were, we should have lynched them all."

"Hippolyta told me the same thing on Friday, that now they had escaped us and we are going to have to snack on them in the war, having them as close at hand as we had them."

"Well yes, even a little girl notices it," said Valerie.

"Hippolyta is not just any little girl, huh? You'd be amazed at some of the things she told me about her own future."

"True. We should have lynched them, all the adults must be training by now."

"And the minors, learning to fly," he said.

"Sure…"

"What they would have trained me in this summer."

"Ugh... you were alone, you only had Lily," she said. "And we at home seeing you every day and not knowing anything, how blind we were too."

"Don't feel bad, Valerie. I had not yet given any clear sign of separating myself from the malefics."

"And Anthony? He saw you every day in class and in the dorm."

"He must have realized," Sev replied. "In the cave ritual I learned that he had always noticed me and that he admired me despite everything."

"Haven't you talked to him about it?"

"I haven't."

"Well, talk, ugh…" she said. "Let him tell you what he thought, now he'll remember it."

"Sure."

"And Parkinson?"

"I haven't talked to her about that in particular either, but she sure, I'm sure she noticed it," he answered. "Lauren has loved me since she was little, since the night of the Sorting.She rejected the dogma of blood purity for me."

"What are you saying?" very surprised.

"What you are hearing."

"And since when have you been with her?" Valerie asked.

"We have been friends since January, but she did not confess to me what she felt. I guessed it and I found out for sure from a ritual we did in the fir tree, but still long before knowing the Magic of the Moon. I fell in love with her too, but I was with Lily, and we both held back what we felt until after Easter. And yet we didn't hook up until very recently, out of respect for Lily."

"Oh…"

"I think she must have had a terrible time seeing me like that, she suffers a lot for me," Sev said. "When we were little and she found out that the Gryffs had attacked me, she didn't sleep a wink all night.And when they broke my arm she thought I had died."

"How awful... poor girl. She has to join us."

"I'm trying to convince her to come the night we're going to the beach, but she doesn't feel safe. She doesn't want so many people to find out at once that she is on our side."

"I understand her, it is a risk for her if someone slips," she opined.

"Sure. In any case, I will go with her one day alone, to say goodbye to her until September, and I will also play 'Wish you were here' for her. I learned it for her, I identify the lyrics with her and with both of us."

"Of course. It's her song, not yours."

"The second part was the two of us until I uncovered myself, two souls in the fish bowl," he explained.

"Written for you, as is. She knows Occlumency, right?"

"Of course, it was with her that I learned. No one at home knows this. She brought a Pensieve in her trunk after Christmas so we could learn Mental Arts together."

"Wow... how deceived you have us all," Valerie said.

"Protecting her secret, the old man can't find out."

"Of course not. And how did you do it?"

"At night, in my corner of the Common Room, Disillusioning ourselves, with Muffliato and sleep potions, two or even three times a week for four or five hours each night," Sev replied.

"Wow… what a sacrifice."

"And when we learned to read, occlude and project, we kept the vipers under control and continued meeting to plan strategies. She has been behind almost all of the Guard's moves."

"Wooow… she is the real thinking head," she opined. "Does Deborah know all this?"

"She doesn't, I already told you that no one at home knows. Don't tell her anything for the moment."

"Of course not, I would never betray your trust. Does Lily know?"

"Yes, of course," he replied. "Yesterday the three of us were together and we Bonded as a Clanship.Our Bond is as powerful or more than that of the fourteen occlumants."

"How awesome..." deeply amazed.

"And also she Bonded with Lily as a Couple."

"And not with you?" Valerie asked.

"No, we will do it one day when we are alone. "

"Sure. I return to the topic of what you have told me. I don't understand why you felt so guilty about your fight with Lily. It was very good, she needed to wake up."

"Yes, but not that way," Sev disagreed.

"Come on, Prince, she was going around without a wand, being threatened."

"But they threatened her because of me."

"Make no mistake, they threatened her for being a Muggle-born," she clarified. "If she hadn't been, the vipers would have left you alone on that subject."

(Oh, interesting assessment. And she is absolutely right, I had never thought about it that way.)

"Did you talk about it with her?" Valerie asked him.

"Yes, and she agreed with me in everything."

"There you have it. Why didn't you talk to her much sooner?"

"Because I felt very bad for what I had done to her," he answered. "That I was a real pig, that I didn't deserve her at all."

"Ugh…poor. If you had talked to her it would have gone away much sooner."

"Of course, but at that time I thought that bad times had to be endured alone."

"And you keep thinking about it, you didn't want to tell me," she said.

"Yeah…"

"Has it been good for you to talk about it and know my opinion?"

"Of course," Sev replied.

"Do you feel less guilty now?"

"I do."

"Because you shouldn't feel at all," she opined. "You didn't hurt her, you just put yourself in the role of her true enemies so that she would find out about the real threat that she suffered from them.You did something very difficult and you did it very well."

"Thank you, Valerie."

"Has your annoyance already passed, sweetheart?"

"Yes, I'm much better. It especially felt good to talk about Lauren with you. It's a thorn in my side, seeing her so alone and not being able to do more to be with her."

"Of course, it must be torture, being the one that has done the most for everyone," she opined. "How difficult.Do you want to tell me something else?"

"Yes, yesterday, after more than a week of being bonded as a Clanship, I realized thanks to Deborah that I could bond with her through the walls, and now we will be in communication whenever we are both at home."

"Of course... that's great..." excited. "And can you catch up with Lily?"

"I Track her, but I can't bond with her from so far away," he answered.

"Oh... what a shame," sorry.

"How fed I am of separation in Houses."

"Of course, your lives were very bitter becuase of it," Valerie agreed.

"Of course."

"Come on, don't be sad again. Should we go somewhere else where we are more comfortable?"

"Sure, let's go to the bedroom," Sev proposed.

"Don't you want to hide now?" excited.

"I don't really feel like it, to be honest. You're going to find me right away."

"Well yes, because I know how to search well," she said. "The first time you came up I heard you open the door and it didn't occur to you to look into the bathtub."

"I know, I'm very silly when it comes to children's games, that's why the other children always laughed at me," shy.

"You're lovely." She gave him many kisses. "Come on, up."