Chapter 50: 33
Year 3, Chapter 10
On Calista's birthday, of all days, she managed to turn a mouse into a badger. At Percy's insistence, she was now meeting him twice a week. He seemed to feel that her progress in Transfiguration was now a direct reflection on his tutoring abilities, and he was as bossy as Professor McGonagall. Still, she couldn't deny that she was pleased to finally get the transformation right.
It took her several more weeks to get the transfiguration to come out properly with any sort of consistency, and she found that, oddly, she still had to resort to mentally berating the mouse, and ordering it to change. She couldn't wait to tell Marcus; he'd been the one to tell her that he didn't think being angry would help her with anything besides curses, and it looked like he was wrong. She'd proven that to herself with the matchstick over the summer, and with nearly every Transfiguration spell she'd attempted since then.
By the time Easter break approached, she had been advised by Professor McGonagall to move onto turning a bird into a goblet. That was the thing Calista loved about Occlumency, and hated about Transfiguration: As soon as she'd grasped one thing, she was relentlessly pushed onto the next. Occlumency was a fun challenge, because even though it was difficult, it felt attainable. transfiguration, on the other hand, felt merely draining.
Three days before Easter break, Olivia cornered her in the girls' lavatory off the Slytherin common room.
"Hello, Snapelet," she said, "Have you been avoiding me? I haven't seen much of you lately."
"Of course I've been avoiding you," Calista said warily. "We don't like each other, remember?"
Olivia waved her hand carelessly. "Don't be so childish. What were we even arguing about, anyway? It can't have been important."
"You're mental," Calista said, "You're absolutely bloody mad. You can't seriously be trying to pretend we're going to be friends again, after everything you've done to me."
Olivia raised her eyebrows coolly. "Done to you? That's rich."
Calista wondered if Olivia was suffering from an utter disconnect from reality, if she really wanted to have this conversation again. Calista didn't, that was for certain.
"Whatever, Olivia. Get out of my way."
"My mother wants you to come visit us in Bearsden for Easter break," Olivia said smoothly, as if they had been having small talk.
"Oh, I'll bet she does," Calista snarled, shoving past Olivia. Olivia grabbed her sleeve on the way by, clutched the material in her fist, and put her face close to Calista's, narrowing her eyes.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I think you know bloody well what it's supposed to mean," Calista said, "Now let go of me, before I hex you."
"Go ahead and try," Olivia said, "I'll turn you into a fly, and crush you."
"Careful," Calista said, "Don't let your mother hear you say that."
"Don't let your mother find out you're hanging around with a bunch of Mudbloods," Olivia countered.
"Shut up!" Calista howled, and she wrenched her sleeve free from Olivia. She knew she should have left the lavatory, but Olivia had sparked something. She could feel rage pulsing within her, rage for all of the things her mother had ever done to her… but her mother wasn't here, and Olivia was, and she was invoking Calista's mother as a casual threat when she had no idea the effect it had on her… or perhaps she did, and that was even worse.
"You shut up about my mother, or I will curse you, I swear I will. I'll make your tongue fall right out of your fat, prissy head. Good luck getting Derek to go on a date with you, without a tongue!"
She added the last bit almost childishly, because she didn't know how else to wound Olivia. All she seemed to care about were her family's position, her own status at school, and boys. Calista chose the easiest target.
Strangely, though, Olivia's face lit up, and she smiled sweetly. "Oh, I don't care about Derek anymore," she said, "I've decided I like Marcus, now. Don't you think we'd make an excellent couple?"
Calista stepped back, feeling like she'd been taken a Blasting Curse to the gut.
"No you don't," she said, weakly. "You think he's a troll."
"I used to think that," she agreed, "But lately, hm…did you know, he's going to be Quidditch captain next year? Yes, I think going steady with the Slytherin Quidditch captain would suit me nicely, don't you?"
"I hate you," Calista whispered, because she didn't know what else to say. "You're horrible."
"Oh," Olivia batted her eyelashes, affected a falsely sweet surprise. "Did you fancy him, too, Calista? How… adorably naive."
"I don't fancy him," Calista said, without conviction, turning to leave. She refused to let Olivia see how much her words were hurting her, fought to make her voice sound disinterested. "I don't even care. Do what you want."
"Oh, well, that's good," Olivia said, her words following Calista out. "I'd hate to see you get hurt. You must realise pursuing him would have been a lost cause… I mean, you may have gotten a haircut and some nice clothes, but you're still not pretty, I'm afraid. Boys do care about that."
(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)
Partly because she was interested in the books her father had lent her, and partly to avoid both Olivia and Marcus, Calista began spending a lot of time in her father's office, and his quarters. She mostly read in his office, while he was teaching, so that if he came into his office between classes, they could chat for a few minutes - once she had gotten into the books, she had a lot of questions about their content.
When he wasn't teaching, she looked for him in his quarters, and if he was around, they talked sometimes instead of her reading. Most of the time, their conversations began with topics from the books he'd lent her, but they often evolved into something more, and something strange began to happen.
Always, in the past, if they spoke about personal things, it would be Severus asking Calista the questions - after all, he had missed out entirely on the first five years of her life, and it seemed natural that he would be curious. But Calista didn't much like to talk about things that had happened before Severus had found her at the orphanage, so she tended to shut down those conversations quickly.
However, it occurred to Calista while she was spending so much of her free time with him again, that she was largely unaware of the first twenty-odd years of his life. She knew what he was like now, but she didn't really know much of what he'd been like when he was her age, what he had done in his spare time before he'd taken on the burden of caring for her.
She remembered the day, earlier this school year, when she'd asked him why he was upset, and he'd opened up to her about unruly students in his class, and the fact that he'd been rejected from the Defence Against the Dark Arts post by someone who was much less qualified. She'd actually liked listening to him, felt glad that he had confided in her.
She thought it made sense that he hadn't talked to her about things like that when she was younger; after all, she probably wouldn't really have understood, and besides, she knew she'd been something of a selfish child - how could she not be, when self-preservation had always seemed of such critical importance? But she was older now, and had at least some capacity for empathy… as Percy would say, she was less of a prat, now.
There was a passage in The Nature of Curses that alluded to the fact that it would be difficult to curse someone that you loved, because the love the caster felt for the target would likely interfere with the anger and desire to cause harm that was required for a successful curse. She was reading it in his study, and a dark thought crept into her head. She said it out loud, looking over the top of her book, to where her father sat in the chair opposite her, reading essays from his O.W.L. class.
"Well, I guess my mother never loved me," she said, and she'd meant it to come out as a dark joke, but her voice came out sounding far more forlorn than she'd meant it to. "Or she wouldn't have been able to curse me, all those times."
Severus lowered the essay he was reading, and regarded her carefully. "Calista," he said, quietly. "I don't believe she ever had the capacity to love anyone. Most…" he sighed, lowering the papers further. "Most Death Eaters don't. Didn't."
She closed her book, keeping her page marked with her finger. Her other hand traced the letters on the cover, absently. "But you do…"
"Yes."
A question occurred to her suddenly, one that was remarkable, in that it had absolutely nothing to do with herself. "You told me, once, that you never loved my m- loved Bellatrix. But… did you ever love anyone else? In… in a romantic way, I mean?"
Severus was silent for a minute. He stood up, and set the papers he'd been reading on the desk against the wall. He had long ago decided not to lie to her; he hadn't expected her to ask about this when he'd determined that, but it didn't change his decision.
"Yes," he said, "I did." I do, he thought.
"So then," she asked, "Why didn't you marry her?"
His jaw worked. There were a million answers he could give her; he wondered which would shut down this line of questioning the quickest.
"She… didn't share my feelings," he said, curtly.
He didn't want to talk about this with his daughter… but then, he had never really talked about it, not since everything had happened… and if he had ever wanted to - which he was not sure that he did - who else would he talk to about it? As far as personal confidantes went, Calista was really all that he had. The fact that she was just barely fourteen years old, and that he was responsible for her welfare often prevented him from being completely forthcoming with her, but she would not be a child forever.
Didn't he wish, in some tiny part of himself, that she would someday grow into a person that he could share things with? Didn't he hope that, when she did grow up, they would be close friends? He had no idea if this was a normal thing for a parent to wish; certainly his own father hadn't. But he already had a sense that he and Calista were much closer than the average parent and child, so perhaps they had their own metric.
"That's insane," Calista said, sincerely, "Why not?"
"I haven't the slightest idea."
That wasn't precisely true, but Calista was too young to understand the nuances of his relationship with Lily; all the places he had gone wrong, and all the places where she perhaps hadn't quite given him a fair chance. But it didn't matter now. He had done his crime, and he would be paying for it, for longer than Calista could possibly understand.
"Who is she?" Calista asked, and Severus felt his heart freeze at her next question. "Is she someone I know?"
He had possibly never wanted to lie to her more than he did in that moment. The chances that she would guess were incredibly slim, she had known Lily only briefly when she was quite small. But…
He remembered that Calista had wished, once, that someone like Lily was her mother, instead of Bellatrix. And he and Calista - they were so similar. If anyone, ever, would guess, it would be her.
"I don't wish to discuss this anymore," he said, with finality.
She was quiet for a minute, and then she said, softly, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what? You haven't done anything. I merely wish to discuss something else, now."
"I don't know," Calista admitted, "You just seemed really sad. It seemed appropriate to say 'I'm sorry'."
He studied her. She seemed quite sincere; it was not the first time recently that he had been surprised by her empathy. It was a quality that he had once presumed she lacked; and perhaps she had, but it didn't seem as if that were the case any longer. Certainly, she had not learned it from her mother. He wondered if she had somehow managed to learn it from him, from the way that he always tried to treat her, or if she had learned it from her friends, who were not always as forgiving of her aggression and mood swings as he was.
"I didn't think that being in love with someone was supposed to make you sad," she said, thoughtfully, after silence had stretched between them for more than a minute.
Severus laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, it does," he said, "It most certainly does."
"Uhm," Calista said, "Why does anyone do it, then?"
"Because we aren't usually given a choice."
"That's cheerful."
"Quite. It shouldn't concern you anyway," Severus said, and for once he was the one desperate to steer their conversation back into the safety of sarcastic teasing, "As you won't be considering any romantic prospects until you're thirty, remember?"
He waited for the inevitable eyeroll, the scowl, the stubborn insistence that she'd be considering romantic prospects precisely never. He remembered what Draco had said at Christmas, and wondered if she'd bring up the same points now: not wanting to have to cook, or share her room.
None of those things happened. Instead, she fell silent, and shifted uncomfortably in her chair, eyes suddenly fixed on the cover of the Occlumency book in her lap.
"Has something interesting happened to the cover of that book?" he asked, and the teasing note had left his voice completely. "You seem particularly interested in it all of a sudden."
She glanced up, but wouldn't hold his gaze for more than a couple of seconds; once, he would have been able to read her thoughts in that time, but not anymore.
"Uhm," she said, "No… I'm just… erm, I'm tired. I think I'm going to go to bed."
"Calista, it's four o'clock in the afternoon."
"I have… homework," she said, standing and setting the Occlumency book down on the seat of the chair. She made to leave the study.
"No, you don't," he replied, and something in his voice warned her against leaving.
"How would you know?" she countered.
"Lucky guess," he said, as if it were anything but, and then, "Calista, is there anything you'd like to tell me?"
"In the history of parenting," Calista wondered, "Has that question ever worked?"
"Is there?" he pressed.
"It's like the parents' version of 'It's not fair'," she continued, ignoring his question.
"Calista…" he said, a note of warning in his voice.
"No," Calista said, "There's nothing I want to tell you. Can I go now?"
Severus frowned. "Very well," he said, grudgingly. He watched her leave the study, heard the door to his flat open and close, and his eyes narrowed dangerously.
Perhaps he had merely embarrassed her by bringing up the topic of romantic prospects, even in a facetious way. Certainly, it wouldn't be the first time that she'd refused to discuss it… but there was something different in the way she'd reacted this time, something that left him with too many unanswered questions, and a sneaking suspicion that he would need to scare the bloody shit out of a teenage boy very, very soon.
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As usual, Olivia was as good as her word. Nearly every time that she and Marcus were in the common room at the same time, she made a point to speak to him, generally with a great deal of accompanying eyelash-fluttering. Calista thought she looked ridiculous; she hoped Marcus thought so, too.
At least he didn't seem to be particularly interested in her. If anything, he typically looked wary when she approached him, but Calista had filled him in on some of the ways Olivia had backstabbed her in the past, so she supposed it wasn't surprising that he seemed to suspect she was up to something.
Of course, Calista had only stuck around to see Marcus' reaction to Olivia's flirtations a handful of times. Most of the time, when it began, she left as quickly as she could. She usually went to hide in her father's office, but if it was past curfew, she simply went to her dormitory room, and stared up at her ceiling while imagining all the hexes she'd cast on Olivia if she could.
More than once, Calista had come very close to actually hexing her, but she was stopped, always, by the prospect of serving a detention with her father - and not because of the detention itself, but because she knew she'd have to tell him what had provoked her towards earning it.
Two weeks after classes had resumed following Easter break, the Slytherin common room was a hive of excited activity concerning the upcoming Quidditch match against Ravenclaw. Ravenclaw's best Chaser had been injured during practise, and was likely to miss the match, which would give the Slytherins the advantage.
Calista was in the common room, writing a letter to her aunt; the same one, in fact, that she had been unable to finish weeks ago. She'd finally decided simply to write about her classes, her upcoming exams, and her plans to bring some different potions ingredients for Draco to try out with her the next time she went to visit. She wasn't ready, still, to talk to her aunt about anything important, but she didn't want Narcissa to think she was avoiding writing to her, either.
She was beginning to think writing the letter out in the common room had been a bad idea, however. Admittedly, she'd known everyone would be talking about the Quidditch match, and asking the players all sorts of questions about their strategy… Calista was never a part of such things, but she'd decided to listen, and watch… well, truth be told, she was only watching one person in particular… but Olivia was still trying to get his attention, and Calista found that she was clenching her jaw without meaning to. It didn't help that Endria was part of the crowd, too.
"The team is so lucky you're going to be Captain next year, Marcus," she was simpering, and she laid her hand on his forearm casually. "You'll be as brilliant a Captain as you are a Chaser, I'm sure."
"Er," Marcus said, looking down at her hand. "Thanks."
Calista imagined sticking her quill in one of Olivia's pretty blue eyes.
"Hey, Marcus," Endria said, "Can you come here a minute? I have to ask you something about Divination…"
Marcus extricated himself from Olivia, and went over to Endria, though it didn't look like she had a textbook or anything out. They spoke quietly for a minute, and Endria glanced back at Olivia a few times. Calista wondered if she was jealous of Olivia trying to flirt with Marcus. Maybe the two of them would get into a duel, Calista thought hopefully, and they'd finish each other off.
Marcus nodded to Endria, and glanced back; then he smiled, and stepped back towards the crowd, back towards Olivia…
Except, he kept walking, past Olivia, past the edge of the buzzing throng of students. Most of them just kept talking to the other Quidditch players, but Endria and Olivia both had their eyes on Marcus. Well… so did Calista, and it appeared to be Calista that Marcus was heading towards, because he kept coming, towards the table she was sitting at with her half-written letter.
For perhaps one second, Calista thought wildly that Marcus was going to come over to ask her out; she wondered frantically what she would do if he did, but only one thought came into her head.
Don't go to a joke shop.
Tonks; Calista bit her lip, to keep from chuckling. All right, then, she wouldn't do that.
But she never found out what Marcus was going to say, because Olivia reached for his shoulder, and when he half-turned to see who had stopped him, she stepped right up to him, and kissed him, right on the mouth.
Calista couldn't stand to see what happened next; she grabbed her parchment, balling it up in her fist, and ran to her dormitory, no longer caring who saw her, and what they interpreted her actions to mean.
Yes, she liked Marcus. She liked him a whole lot, and she couldn't not like him no matter how hard she tried. What the hell was she supposed to do now? It was bad enough suspecting that he and Endria fancied each other; it was another thing entirely to actually see Olivia of all people kiss him.
Olivia, who probably had already kissed other boys, probably knew exactly what she was doing… was a million times prettier than Calista would ever be, and was brilliant at Transfiguration, too. She was even a good flyer. Calista wondered bitterly if she'd join the Quidditch team next year, so the two of them could be together all the time. Would Marcus start making fun of her, taunting her about her mother, too?
Calista tossed the half-finished letter to Narcissa aside, and withdrew a fresh sheet of parchment. She scribbled furiously, writing the letter she needed to before she lost her nerve.
Dear Aunt Narcissa,
I'm sorry I haven't written sooner. There's something that's been bothering me that I've been meaning to tell you about, but I wasn't sure how. The girl in my class, the one I told you about before, Olivia Avril, has been making my life miserable this year.
She teases me, but I can deal with that. There are other things going on, though. I found a letter her mother sent her where she was encouraging Olivia to try and be my friend so she could use me to try and gain social standing for her family. Her mother knows I'm related to you, and she thinks you and Uncle Lucius will help her family somehow if Olivia's friends with me… except she doesn't really want to be friends with me, she's been trying to ruin my life since we met, and I'm tired of it.
I know none of this makes much sense, and perhaps I should have told you about the letter sooner, at Christmas, but I wasn't sure if I should.
There's something else, too - and you said I could talk to you, so please don't tell my dad, but there is a boy that I like and I think Olivia's gone and ruined that, too. I guess it's not important to tell you that, but it's the reason I feel so awful right now.
I hope you can write back to me soon. Especially if you can write horrible things about Olivia.
Sincerely,
Calista
She had just finished writing her letter, and was sealing it, when the door of the dormitory room opened. She looked up, knowing she had something akin to murder in her eyes, expecting to launch herself furiously at Olivia, if she was the one who came through the door.
It wasn't Olivia, though. It was Emily.
"Hey," Emily said softly, perching on the edge of her bed, which was next to Calista's.
"Go away, Em. I'm not in the mood to play Gobstones, or whatever."
"I don't want to play Gobstones, either," Emily said, "I'm actually here because… Calista, Marcus is standing outside our door. He wants to talk to you, he asked me to see if you'd come out."
"Well, I won't," she said. "Tell him to go away, so I can go to the Owlery. I have something to send."
Emily frowned, and hesitated.
"Tell him to go away," Calista repeated, firmly. "I don't want to talk to him."
Emily sighed, and went to the door dutifully. She stepped outside of it, and Calista could hear a murmured conversation, but couldn't make out the words. After a minute, Emily came back.
"Well, did he go away?"
Emily nodded, and fixed her eyes on a point on the wall.
"Calista…" Emily said, "There's something… Olivia will be mad I told you, but you'll find out soon enough anyway, everyone in the common room saw it…"
"I know what happened," Calista snarled, "I don't care. She can… she can have him."
Damn it. Why, why did her voice have to tremble, when she said that? What the hell was she taking all these Occlumency lessons for, if she couldn't manage to shut her emotions down when she wanted to?
"After she… you know, after she kissed him -"
"Shut up," Calista said, and put her hands over her ears, letting the letter fall onto her bed.
Emily rolled her eyes, and strode over to Calista. She reached for Calista's wrists, and Calista yelped and started, when Emily pulled them away from Calista's ears.
"I'm sorry!" Emily said quickly, "I just… I just think you should listen. Marcus pushed her away, Calista. He said… he told her to stop, because there's someone else he likes."
"Yeah," Calista said, "Endria Folland. So they can fight over him, then."
"He didn't say who it was," Emily said, "But he wants to talk to you right now, not Endria."
"So he can tell me that he likes Endria, in case I ever get the same idea as Olivia? I don't think I need to hear that."
"Okay." Emily sighed. "I can't… just go mail your letter, Calista. Forget I said anything, all right?"
"Gladly," Calista muttered, and she picked up her letter again, and took it out of the room. She braced herself to run into Marcus in the corridor outside her dormitory room, prepared to bolt back inside if he was there, but the corridor was empty.
She practically ran out of the common room, with her head ducked low so she wouldn't have to see who was in there, wouldn't have to face any of them teasing her about the way she'd run out of the room when Olivia kissed Marcus…
Once she had cleared the common room, she felt the hot pinpricks of tears threatening to flood her eyes. She let a few of them fall, let herself feel the sting of them for a couple of minutes, but by the time she reached the bottom of the stairwell to the Owlery, she wiped them resolutely away.
She climbed the stairs, and located her father's owl, just as the last bit of sun disappeared beyond the horizon. She attached her letter, and carried the bird carefully to the window, where it flew off, a black shape against a lavender sky.
Then, she heard careful footsteps behind her. She turned, instantly alert, even though no one had attacked her in a long time…
"Calista?"
It was Marcus. He stepped forward; he must have been lurking on the other side of the tower, watching her send her letter.
"What are you doing here?" she snarled, pleased that she at least managed to sound cross, instead of crushed.
"I… Emily told me you were going to meet me here, to talk," he said, uncertainly.
Calista blinked. "Emily lied," she said. "I told her to tell you to go away, because I had a letter to send and I didn't want to talk to anyone on the way."
"Well, you've already sent it," Marcus said, sensibly. "You're not on the way anymore, so can we talk now?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I already know what you're going to say, and I don't want to hear it."
"You… don't? I mean, you do? I mean..." he paused, shook his head. "I'm confused, now."
"You can go marry Endria," she said sourly, trying to gather enough resolve to storm past him, "Or Olivia. I don't care."
"Hang on," Marcus said, "I only just turned fifteen, I'm not going to go marry anybody. But even if I was… why would I marry either one of them? Calista, I don't like Olivia. I had nothing to do with… with what she did."
"Well, fine, Endria, then," she said, but she felt too weak to even be angry anymore.
Even if he did fancy Endria, it wasn't like he was being mean to her. He was trying to explain it to her, so her feelings wouldn't be hurt. It was sweet… completely ill-advised, but sweet. Exactly the sort of thing I like him for, she thought hopelessly.
"I don't like Endria like that, either."
"What? Of course you do - you said she was pretty. No - you said she was 'a right stunner'," Calista said, hearing the trace of bitterness in her words. She should have just gathered her nerve at the very beginning of this conversation, and left.
"Yeah," Marcus said, sounding puzzled. Calista was sort of glad for the dim light, so she couldn't quite see his face. It made it a little easier, that way. "I did say that, but don't you remember what I said after that?"
"No," she said, "What, then? Something about how she's going to be a Prefect next year? Everyone says she is."
"Calista," Marcus said, and he sounded exasperated. "I didn't come here to talk about Endria. I said… I said that bit about her being a looker, which was probably dumb, and then I said, 'but she's not really the kind of girl I want' and you couldn't get away from me fast enough...you grabbed all your stuff and you ran away…"
"That was… that wasn't because of you. Olivia… she put something in my book, something she knew would make me upset."
"Well," Marcus said, "She has some timing, then. I thought for sure you knew exactly what I meant and you were letting me know what you thought… but then, every time I kept hanging out with you, you were blushing and… and playing with your hair and stuff…"
Calista winced. He had noticed all of that. She wanted to disappear. She wished she'd attached herself to that owl.
"And my dad says that's how you can tell a girl likes you, so I thought… well, maybe you were just shy, maybe I needed to make it really clear how I felt, so I asked you what you were going to do in Hogsmeade. I thought maybe I could buy you a butterbeer or something, or hell, we could even go to that bookstore you always go to with your friends, I don't care. But you weren't listening to me, and when I asked you what you were thinking about, you said 'Transfiguration', which I know you hate, so you must've really not wanted to listen to me to be thinking about that."
"Marcus…" Calista said, and she thought her voice sounded like it was made of glass, fragile and transparent. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," Marcus said, and Calista was surprised to hear nerves in his voice, too. "That I like you. I mean… I like you, you know?"
He swallowed nervously when she didn't say anything immediately, and continued. "I'm probably mucking this up. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be saying… my dad said I should just give you flowers, but somehow that didn't really seem like your sort of thing."
Calista found her voice. "Is this… is this some kind of sick joke?" she asked, quietly. "Is Olivia going to come out from behind you and start laughing at me, or something?"
"Huh?" Marcus said, "Calista, I'd never do that to you."
She believed him. He'd never… in all the time she'd known him, he'd never once been mean to her, not for one second, not even when she'd been mean to him. Calista felt something like the same flutter she always got around him, except this time it seemed to be expanding inside of her, swelling bigger and bigger, giving her a warm, tingly feeling from her toes all the way up to the top of her head. Calista wasn't sure if she was going to laugh, or cry, or just wake up. This wasn't a dream, was it?
"Will you please say something?" Marcus prompted, "I think I'm going to be sick if you don't."
"I…" Why did this suddenly seem a hundred times more difficult than Occlumency lessons? Marcus liked her. He actually liked her. And all she had to do was tell him she liked him too, and then… well, and then what? She had no idea.
"I like you, too." she said, quickly.
Marcus breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Oh, good. I was afraid maybe you still didn't. I would have felt like such an idiot. I wasn't even going to say anything… but then Endria, she kept telling me I should, and Kim and Conor and… well, pretty much the whole Quidditch team said I should."
"Wait," Calista said, "What do you mean… the whole Quidditch team?"
"Yeah, I'm not very good at secrets," Marcus said, "They all know. I made them swear not to tell you, though. Said I'd break their broomsticks if they did."
Calista laughed, finally releasing some of the tension that had built up in her gut.
"That sounds like something I would say," she said.
"Nah," Marcus said, "I've heard you, you'd threaten to hex them. See, I'm not so good at that, either, so I just threaten to break stuff."
"So… so what do we do now?" Calista wondered. "I mean… I'm all for living in the Owlery so we never have to face everyone in the common room again…"
Marcus chuckled. "I don't care about that part. We'll go back together, and if anyone tries to give you a hard time… well, I'll break faces, if I have to."
"What about," Calista said, because this had just occurred to her, "What you said, before? You said… you said you were afraid of my dad. I'm, uhm… kind of not allowed to have a… erm, well, I'm not supposed to go on any dates until I'm thirty."
"Yeah, about that." Marcus said, "I think your dad already knows I like you, because he's been giving me hell for like, two weeks, ripping into me in class, and then taking points away every time he sees me in the corridors. I can… I can deal with it, if you can. Although we're definitely not going to win the House Cup, if this keeps up."
"I was wondering what happened to all our points," she said, and then, "My dad hasn't been cross with me in ages. I kind of miss it."
Marcus laughed. "So then," he said, "There's just one more thing…"
"What's that?"
Marcus crossed the few steps that separated them, and grinned at her; she felt her insides go all melty and fluttery and all kinds of other words she never thought she'd use to describe her insides. Her heart started racing; she couldn't help it, that grin, and he was so close to her … he smelled like the grass on the Quidditch pitch and that had never occurred to her to be a smell she liked before, but she found that suddenly, she did.
"Can I kiss you, now?" Marcus asked, and he sounded like he had been wanting to ask her this question for a very long time.
Calista couldn't make her voice work if she tried; she just swallowed the lump in her throat, and nodded.
It would have been too frightening, perhaps, if Marcus had seemed to know exactly what he was doing; she might have gotten scared and run away, if it seemed like this was the kind of thing he did all the time.
But it didn't seem that way at all; she noticed that his hand was trembling, just a bit, when he brought it up to the side of her neck, and laid it there gently. Calista was fiercely glad for the falling darkness in the owlery, because she knew her face would be red; she could feel heat in her cheeks and her neck; she wondered if her skin would burn his hand.
He leaned forward, and pressed his lips to hers, very softly at first, and then with just a bit more pressure. It was awkward, and Calista felt like her nose got in the way, and even though she wasn't really doing much of anything, she was sure she was doing it wrong.
It only lasted a second or two, and then he pulled back, taking his hand off her neck. They looked at each other for a moment, and Calista wondered what she was supposed to do now. Were they going to kiss again? Even though it made her nervous, part of her hoped they were...
"So your dad is really going to hate you going to the Owlery now," Marcus said sheepishly.
Calista felt the tension and nerves drain out of her, and she laughed, a loud, awkward, enthusiastic laugh - the kind Marcus had always been able to get out of her before. She was glad for the reminder that, despite the fact that they were in uncharted territory now, he was still just Marcus. Calista reached for his hand in the darkness, something she'd been wanting to try doing for a long time.
"He really is going to hate it," she agreed. "I wonder if he'll make me copy lines again."
"What d'you think he'd make you write?" Marcus asked.
"I will not kiss Quidditch players in the Owlery until I'm thirty," she said.
"Yeah, see, that's no good," Marcus said, "You shouldn't tell lies."
He grinned, and leaned forward to kiss her cheek, this time. "It's almost curfew," he said, "Ready to go back? Or did you really want to live here, now?"
"We better go back," Calista said, "We probably both have owl dung on us already."
"Perfect," Marcus said, "That's how I always pictured it would be the first time I kissed a girl."
"Well, it wasn't the first time," Calista said, and she wasn't even certain if she meant Olivia, or if she was trying to find out if he had kissed other girls before that day.
"I didn't kiss Olivia," he pointed out, "She kissed me. And for the record, I'll take the owl dung, any day."
Calista smiled, and they left the Owlery holding hands. It turned out to be every bit as nice as she'd always thought it might be.
"Oh," Calista said suddenly, "I just realised… That letter I sent… I told my aunt that Olivia ruined everything. I guess… I guess that's not really true anymore."
"Well, you can write her tomorrow, when your owl comes back," Marcus said, and then he grinned at her again. "I think I might have to go to the owlery tomorrow, too. Maybe… around seven o'clock?"
"I'm a little bit afraid this is going to turn out to be a dream," Calista confessed, "But if it's not… then I'll definitely be there."
"It better not be a dream," Marcus said, "It was hard, telling you all that stuff. If I have to do it all again, I think I'll just start with the kissing."
"That's… yeah, I'd be okay with that."
Their eyes met, and they both smiled. Calista didn't even care that she was blushing again. She didn't care about Olivia, or about Transfiguration, or exams. She could worry about all of that tomorrow… at least until seven o'clock.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone