Hogwarts: The Legacy

(c)2005 by Josh Cohen. May not be reprinted, except for personal use. The Potterverse was created by JK Rowling, and remains her property. I\'m just borrowing it for a little while.

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SEVENTEEN: REVELATION

Warning: contains nudity.

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The final match of the Quidditch season had come and gone. The Ravenclaw Quidditch team was wholly dejected – Slytherin had managed to rack up 500 points in their final match against Gryffindor. Jason had tried to lighten the mood by mentioning that their high score of 560 still stood, but the dirty looks he’d received from Andrew and Lisa put a stop to that.

Even his budding more-than-friendship with Caroline wasn’t helping. Since that first night after the Gryffindor match, more than a month ago, he and Caroline had been kissing each other hello and goodbye, reveling in the newness of it. But after that final match, it seemed as though some of the shine had worn off.

“I don’t understand it,” Caroline said, her voice low. Dina was taking a shower, and Margot was asleep; Caroline was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching Alison paint her toenails. “It’s only a game. How can it affect him so much?”

Alison shrugged. “To Quidditch junkies, it’s more than a game, it’s a lifestyle. My cousin played for Beaubaxton’s, and practically the moment she made the team, she turned into a walking Quidditch encyclopedia.”

“I’m glad Jason hasn’t gone that far.”

She smiled. “I don’t think he will. He really likes you.”

Caroline blushed; after all this time, she still had the same sensibilities. Alison thought it was cute, but Caroline disagreed. Not that that stopped her from blushing in the first place. “I really like him. He’s...” She thought for a moment. “I don’t know how to put it, but I enjoy being with him far more than I could have guessed.”

Alison privately thought Caroline was in love with Jason – not that Alison hadn’t crushed on him in second year herself, but she cared more about him as a friend, and she didn’t want to upset the dynamic of herself, Jason, and Christopher anyway. She held her counsel, though; it wasn’t the kind of thing one sprung on a girl as naive as Caroline. It was the kind of thing she came to herself.

That didn’t seem likely any time soon.

Not that it mattered; the bathroom door opened and Dina stepped out, her long, fine black hair still damp and heavy against the knee-length t-shirt she was wearing. “Going to see Fabian?” Alison asked.

Dina blushed; Alison chuckled inwardly at the fact that her two roommates – Margot didn’t really count – were such easy touches. “Not tonight. We have our Arithmancy examination tomorrow, and then we’re done for the year.”

“Do you think you’ll do well?” asked Caroline, who was in the same class as Jason, Dina, Christopher, and Alison for Muggle Studies, but had chosen Ancient Runes instead of Arithmancy.

“I suppose so,” Dina said with a shrug. “Professor Vector seems to be taking it easier on us, now that Slytherin’s won the Quidditch Cup.”

Dina sat down on the edge of Alison’s bed and accio’d a dry towel from the cabinet near the bathroom door; the house-elves kept it well-stocked with towels, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and anything else the students might need. She wound the towel around her hair and placed it atop her head.

“What’s on your mind?” Alison asked, twisting the top back on the nail polish and tossing it into the drawer of her nightstand.

Dina wasn’t surprised that Alison could pick up on her moods so easily; they’d been living together for a year, and Alison was particularly perceptive in any case. “I was actually thinking about Fabian.”

“No wonder you took such a long shower.”

Dina’s cheeks flushed again, as did Caroline’s, surprisingly enough. Alison had mentioned some of the benefits of the showers in passing, and evidently her roommates had tried them. “That wasn’t it.” Her voice was flat. “I’m just feeling bad about the whole thing.”

“How so?”

Dina had revealed to Caroline that she’d once been in a hand-holding relationship with Jason that had almost ended badly. Caroline was coming to the realization that she would have to tell Dina about her own relationship with him. “I rejected Jason so soundly, and yet when I...” She paused. She didn’t know whether or not Caroline knew she knew. “When Fabian came to me and offered to take me to Lover’s Lane, I didn’t say no.”

“Why not?” Caroline asked.

“I don’t know why not. It was impulsive, and I don’t usually do impulsive things.”

“I know how that feels.” Caroline scooted backward and drew her legs up, her chin on her knees. The flannel of her pajama trousers was comfortingly-soft. “I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything impulsively.”

“Anything?” There was a gleam in Alison’s eye that Caroline didn’t like; Alison had been pressuring Caroline to tell Dina what was going on, and Caroline had been fighting her on it every step of the way. “Are you sure?”

Dina looked at Alison; in the months since they’d become friends, she’d started to pick up on some of Alison’s moods and intimations as well. Not as many as Alison could of hers, but enough. She looked at Caroline, and realized the unfamiliar expression on the other girl’s face was one of guilt.

“I’m sorry, Dina,” she said quietly. “I should have told you.”

“Told me what?” Dina folded her hands in her lap. Her whisper of a voice was steely and hard.

“Jason and I. We’ve been... sort of...” But Caroline’s voice trailed off when she saw the expression on Dina’s face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Dina got up and stalked off to the bathroom without another word.

“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Alison remarked.

“Now you see why I wanted to keep it from her?”

“Yeah, but it’s better to get it in the open,” she said. “Don’t worry about Dina. She’ll come around.”

“I hope so. The Leaving Feast is tomorrow, and I would not want to go home for the summer with this unsolved.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Alison put out her lights and drew her curtains; she preferred to sleep with them closed these days. Caroline pushed backward until she was leaning on her headboard and took out the new issue of Muggle Stories, a magazine published by the Quibbler company. It was harmless light reading, she’d learned, and it helped her to unwind, even if she didn’t get all the jokes.

But by the time she finished the magazine, Dina still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. There was only one way in, only one way out; Caroline knew she was still in there.

Better to wait, she decided. Caroline put out her lights and slid down under the quilt. She did leave her bed curtains open, but if Dina came out, it was after Caroline had already fallen asleep.

Jason was quietly reviewing Arithmancy problems – just in case – when he heard footsteps coming up the ladder to his alcove. Dina’s dark head poked its way over the lip of the floor, and when she saw him, she pulled herself up the rest of the way.

“You’re up late,” he said quietly. It was almost midnight; he’d been planning to turn in in a few minutes anyway.

Dina just stood there.

“What?”

“When were you going to tell me?” she whispered – which, for her, was nearly inaudible.

“Tell you what?”

“Don’t lie to me!” Her narrow face was tight with strain, and Jason belatedly realized the puffiness under her eyes was from crying, not from lack of sleep or stress. “How long has it been going on?”

Jason closed the book and set it aside. “Sit down,” he said.

“The hell I will!” Her hands were tightly knotted in front of her waist. “How long?”

He blinked once, slowly. “I don’t know how long she liked me. But the first time was after the match against Gryffindor.”

“I thought so.”

“Sorry?”

Dina’s hands separated, clenched into fists at her sides. “I heard you fighting with her about Colleen O’Toole.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to get mad at me about Colleen, too.”

“You did something with her?”

“Of course not!” Jason shifted uncomfortably; he’d thought about it when she’d pressed herself on him after the win over Hufflepuff, but Fabian had been there to rescue him. No matter how pretty Colleen was – and she was pretty, no two ways about it – he had never been interested in her. He said so.

“So you’ll just let any girl kiss you, is that it?”

“Dina, what the bloody hell are you on about?”

“You and Caroline! Behind my bloody back!”

Jason shifted again. That one he was definitely guilty of. He opened his mouth, but Dina held up her hand. “Don’t try to explain it to me,” she snapped. “Just don’t. There’s no way you could possibly make me see your side of things.”

“Fine.” His voice was quiet and reflective. “I won’t. I’ll just tell you I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Caroline didn’t feel comfortable. Hell, half the time she doesn’t even feel comfortable being in a relationship.”

“Then why do you stay in it? I hadn’t thought you that kind of person.” Her hands went back together.

“Because she wants to be.” Jason had had his feet up on the low table between the couches; he put them down on the floor. “Every time she tells me she feels uncomfortable, I stop. I tell her we can end things until she’s feeling right about it. And every time she tells me no.”

“Ah, but when I told you no, you didn’t press on, did you?”

“What?”

Dina’s dark-brown eyes seemed to glisten in the low light. “I told you no, and you backed away, just like that. She tells you no, and you don’t. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“She doesn’t tell me no! She tells me to wait, and I wait. I waited for you, too.”

Dina paused. “Excuse me?”

“I would’ve waited for you,” he said. “I respected your decision to stop whatever it was we were doing. If you had come to me and said you wanted to try again, I bloody well would’ve tried again!”

Dina slowly made her way to the other couch. Her posture was perfectly straight. “You mean that?”

“Of course I mean that! But I didn’t want to lose you as a friend, either, and if that meant not being... you know, together... then I would be all right with that.”

A tear made its way down Dina’s cheek, followed by another.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

She swiped at her face with the sleeve of her t-shirt. “No, it’s me. I just was so angry with both of you.”

“You had every right to be. We shouldn’t have hidden from you. You’re our friend.”

“I still am?” She sniffed.

“You still are.” Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a cotton handkerchief. Dina looked leery, but he smiled at her. “I haven’t used it. You’re safe.”

She took it and pressed it to her nose; even the sound of her blowing her nose was a soft sussurration. She proferred it back to him, but he shook his head. “You can keep it. At least until it’s washed.”

Dina tried an experimental laugh. “Thank you,” she said.

He shrugged. “You’re my friend. Of course I’ll lend you my handkerchief.”

She smiled.

Jason picked up the textbook. “Since you’re here, would you like to study a few problems before bed?”

“I suppose so.”

Both of them thought the same thing: it was a start.

Fabian had taken Dina’s decision to break things off with remarkable aplomb. Or, at least, Dina thought so. It made her wonder just why he’d been interested in her anyway.

She looked at herself critically in the mirror – unenchanted, thankfully – in the bathroom. Alison, Margot, and Caroline were all in the common room, and she had the luxury to get a good look.

What was it that boys would see in her, anyway? Where her mother and Parvati were slender, Dina was thin; where Caroline and Alison had curves, Dina could get by without a brassiere and no one would notice; where most girls had hips that at least jutted out a little, Dina’s body seemed to go straight down from ribs to knees. Her bottom was barely padded, and her narrowness was fully obvious; the dimples at the bottom of her back looked like she’d pressed her thumbs into her flesh and her skin had molded itself around them. The planes of her face were too well-defined, and the bones of her wrists and ankles were clearly visible. Even her lips were thin.

Dina had always been thin, though. In her second month at Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey had gently asked her if she was eating enough, and had convinced her to come in for a full physical workup. Even at Hogwarts, the medi-witch had said, some girls had eating disorders, not eating enough or eating too much or eating and purging. But none of those hallmarks existed in Dina; she was simply naturally-thin.

If there was anything about Dina that she didn’t have problems with, it was her hair, which was always lustrous, black enough to shine almost blue in the light, and her eyes, which were dark enough that even she caught herself being mesmerized by them on those rare occasions when she put on eye makeup. Her nose was all right, too; narrow as the rest of her, but not pointed, and not large.

She heaved a sigh and pulled on the robe she’d dropped on the vanity counter, then went out into the main dormitory room. Mechanically, she pulled on pants, trousers, a white button-down shirt, and trainers. She had a little time to kill before the Leaving Feast, so she went downstairs to the common room. Jason, Alison, and Caroline were playing Exploding Snap.

“Where’s Christopher?” she asked tentatively as she sat down at the table. For some reason, they were on the main floor, not up in the alcove.

“I think he’s taking a nap. His curtains are shut at any rate.”

Dina nodded. Alison laid down a Six of Cauldrons atop the Six of Gems that was already on the discard pile. Caroline followed that with a Thirteen of Cauldrons.

“He’s going to win,” Alison said. “He always wins.”

“Almost always,” Dina added. Sure enough, Jason set down the Warlock of Cauldrons, and the pile exploded. Dina slid her wand out from the pocket in her trousers and accio’d the cards into her hand. “You can’t play a good round with only three people anyway.”

Alison grinned, predatory. “Now we’ve got a game.”

Dina shuffled and dealt; she drew the Two and Seven of Snares, the Lady of Cauldrons, the Sceptre of Wands, and the Eleven of Gems. The first up-card was the Ace of Gems. Alison played a Ten of Gems on that, followed by Caroline’s Ten of Cauldrons. Jason drew two cards, then played a Five of Cauldrons. Dina followed that with the Lady of Cauldrons, and the other three drew a card apiece. Alison continued to draw, and Jason got a worried expression on his face; unlike many muggle card games where the fewer cards you had, the closer you were to winning, the more cards in a hand of Exploding Snap, the more chances to complete a round and explode the discard pile. Eventually, she put down the Four of Cauldrons, and Jason dropped a Dervish on that. Dina, now with the freedom to play anything, played the Six of Gems she’d drawn on her own Lady. Alison’s next card was the Six of Cauldrons, and Caroline played the Six of Snares.

Jason looked speculatively at his cards. “You’ve got a win. I know you do.”

“How can you tell?” Dina’s voice was positively stoic; Jason usually won at Exploding Snap, but Dina had her share of spoilers, each of them coming when least expected.

“I just know.” He placed down the Lord of Snares and leaned back quickly as the discard pile gave an ominous rumble.

Dina shrugged and flipped her Two of Snares onto the stack.

She had an apologetic look on her face as Jason accio’d the scattered cards into his hand.

“I told you,” he said.

If Dina noticed that the hand he used to pass the deck to Alison was now resting gently on Caroline’s hand as she sat comfortably next to him, she didn’t mention it.

The games continued for another hour – Jason won four, Dina another one, and, surprisingly, Caroline snatched one out from under Alison’s nose. She freely admitted she wasn’t much good at the game; she played it because it was fun. And she didn’t mind when the pile blew up in her face. They all went to dinner together – Christopher came down toward the end of the hour, and it was the game in which he participated where Caroline won – and afterward, sat up in the alcove, playing more games. There was little else to do, and besides, everyone was feeling the melancholy of being apart for another summer.

For Jason, it was the knowledge that the magical community in Aberdeen was very small. He knew everyone in it, unless someone had been born over the past months. He had plans to spend a week with the grans, and maybe visit his mother’s parents as well; they summered in France now that her father had retired from his government job. He would certainly miss his friends, and he had doubts that Professor Granger would allow him to visit Caroline at Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire. After all, it would be a strange-yet-unintentional invasion of privacy for a student to visit a teacher’s home. Perhaps he could get Caroline to convince her parents that Flooing to visit every few weeks wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he could even see the house where she’d grown up; even she had no idea where it was, although her parents did. But it was shaping up to be a boring summer. At least there was the possibility that they would go visit his dad’s friends, the Boots; their twin sons were a year younger than Jason, but at least they played Quidditch. Very few people in Aberdeen did.

For Dina, it promised to be a very trying summer. She didn’t know what her mother would be doing for the two-month period; privately, she hoped that her jaunts with Parvati would come fewer and farther-between, and that she would be less interested in her daughter’s love life and more in her life as a whole. At least their flat in London was near Diagon Alley, so she would be able to socialize with some of her friends if they happened along. But while Dina loved her mother, and even loved her aunt, they were nothing like she was. Privately, she wondered how her mother had even gotten sorted into Ravenclaw, given that she seemed to show no interest in complicated magic. It had been her father who had taught her most of what she knew; only after he had died had her mother worked with her on Charms and Transfiguration until school had started.

For Alison, it was just another summer. Hanging out with her sisters – none of whom were magical – and hitting the malls and shops. Her oldest sister, Christianne, was in her summer before university, and the middle sister, Brienne, was between fifth and sixth form at a school in the countryside. There would be parties, there would be boys, and, thankfully, there would be no magic. At school, Alison’s prowess in Charms and Herbology were well-known among the Ravenclaw third years, but at home, she would be just another fourteen-year-old girl. There were friends to see and there were adventures to have. But she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to go back to the friends who, like herself, were growing older and becoming more and more different each time she wrote to them.

For Caroline, there was nothing but a sense of longing to spend more time with Jason. They had done nothing more than kiss and snuggle on couches together, and occasionally in Moaning Myrtle’s disused corridor as well, but there was something about him that made her feel safe. It would be interesting, though, to spend more time with her parents, see what they were like when they were together. They seemed so different – so in love, but so different in personality. Her father had a dry sense of humor that he unleashed at the oddest times, and occasionally even called his wife “Granger”, probably a holdover from school days. Her mother was warm and gentle and supportive; not that her father wasn’t, but he didn’t show it as much. It would be nice to not have to call her “Professor” as well.

For Christopher, who lived in Islington with his father – his mother had died when he was six – there would be some loneliness. They would be summering in Melbourne, Australia, and while he was looking forward to certain aspects of the holiday, arriving in a city known for its beaches in the middle of winter seemed counterproductive. Not that he had a choice; his father worked for the Ministry of Magic, in the International Magical Cooperation Office under Percy Weasley – who was, according to his dad, a good boss, if a bit officious and bossy – and Percy had said go. Where Percy said go, Mr Talmadge went, and if it was during holidays, Christopher went as well.

What he’d miss most, though, was the watch. For the past several months, he had been sleeping with his curtains drawn more and more often, the better to watch the watch. He feared he was becoming addicted. Worse, he feared that when he really did find a girl willing to be more than just friends, he feared his expectations would be too high. But he couldn’t stop watching. And he couldn’t tell anyone.

He desperately wished to. But he knew the rules. And it sucked.

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