❝ 𝔫𝔬 𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝖗𝖚𝖑𝖊𝖘

“i know what classifies a defense spell, funnily enough,” molly spit, getting a little tired of the pretense. “and i just –” want to talk someone who understands my pain. want to focus on something other than my injury, for a change. want to protect my family – maybe at any cost. maybe in a way that will make them never trust me again. 

she had a lengthy list of folks she knew could obliviate cress if they made any breakthroughs with the charm, before he could teach his death eater friends. half of them shared her last name. 

“i know it’s only been a few weeks, but this kind of spell damage…” the young witch flexed the fingers of her left hand a bit, unable to open her hand completely without the muscles and tendons seizing and snapping the digits back together and onto her palm. “has made me reconsider wand use for the time being. i’m not a healer. but i could maybe – with this…armour charm, i can help prevent this sort of thing from happening to anyone else.” the extended weasley family especially. 

molly closed her notebook and glanced at her watch. dinner was soon, and the girl was eager to see her sister. “help me or not, cress, that’s fine – it just might be more of an intellectual challenge for you than sucking up to gemma gamp.” 

her notebook closed-- and, with the decisive clap of the pages, what he had thought to be an unspoken moratorium on hostilities ended. molly was openly taunting him now, seemingly eager to return to status quo, and, while he admitted that he half-wanted to rise to the bait----- to raise his voice in a way that was sure to stir up animosity and starting with a solid retaliation of i don’t suck up to anyone, least of all her-----  he found his jaw locked in position when he tried to speak. he could do nothing but stand still, frozen in place, her words weighing heavily in his mind.  

for most of his life, cress had considered himself a researcher first. boundlessly curious and relentless in his studies, it had been no surprise to anyone when he found himself sorted into ravenclaw as soon as the sorting hat had been placed on his head. even as he’d joined the death eaters, had sworn loyalty to them, in his mind, it was still the pursuit of knowledge over all -- and thus, what came out of his mouth surprised even him.

“of course, i want to help,” he said emphatically, “and, moreover, honestly, i think i can... but, if that’s what you think of me, that i’m a puppet or that i can be used by you or anyone else, then maybe... i’d rather not.”

“you and your family-- you’re always nattering on about loyalty and what’s wrong and right. you’re all so happy to treat me like a pariah just because of where we happen to stand on the side of a fence,” his teeth were gritted together by now, “it’s not that simple.”  

after a moment of tense silence, his eyes shuttered downwards. then, as if seeing things for the first time, cress looked from her arm to his own and flexed his fingers in consideration. he took in a deep breath, choosing his words carefully.

“i’m sorry about what happened to you, molly. i wouldn’t wish that on gemma gamp and i swear on merlin that she deserves everything coming to her,” he said, “and i guess, that’s the thing. i’m not here as your enemy. i don’t want to use things against you. but, at the same time, i think magic is for everyone. i don’t want to just help you. i don’t want to work on anything that everyone doesn’t get equity in-- and i just don’t know if that’s what i’d be agreeing to.”

cress vc “fuck em”

no but srsly i think cress is someone who sees restrictions/limits as things for other people

not just in a reactionary fuck u i do what i want to

but like also a “try to stop me… literally try… so far… no one has”

roxanne or viv or literally anyone vc, probably: whY The Fuck R U The WaY U R?? diD Ur PArentS Not LoVe u r SmtHing bc god DAMn !!!! 

me: honestly… sorry kids, cress is the way he is precisely bc… his parents loved him… maybe too much. his parents loved him so much that they uprooted their whole lives so he could grow up in the magical world. they loved him so much that they compromised their morals and bit down on their pride. 

they loved him so much that they convinced him, that not only did he deserve the world– he was owed it. and i guess, that’s where the root of the problem is. 

as a child, he returned his parents love and they shook their head. no, cress, don’t waste that on us. you are meant for bigger things. 

now, if you asked cress what he loved most in the world, he would say with no hesitation, knowledge.

secondly, i suppose, he might say magic. and then, after a pause, maybe he’d say “and, of course, i love my parents.” but knowledge first.

that doesn’t mean he’s unfeeling. he is not even unloving. he’s had plenty of crushes, gone on dates, even dreams of… romance and having a family one day.

it’s just that- cress has long since made up his mind on what he wants. his first love and passion is to pursue knowledge without boundary and limitation. and he’s prepared to give up everything else for it. 

love is sacrifice– and for cress, that means sacrificing a lot. his friends, his morals? out the window. the possibility of romance? the pursuing of his own happiness? all gone. 

it’s not that he doesn’t recognize that he’s at least a little in the wrong, that what he is doing can hurt people. he’s deluding himself, but, somewhere, deep down he understands that. it’s just that, in the end, he supposes— when he gets what he wants– what he has desired for ever since his parents told him that he could have anything in the world.— perhaps, it will all be worth it. 

oh i’m scared to see the ending / why are we pretending / this is nothing 

maddison found herself utterly grateful when she felt the air around them shift. granted, she was left feeling slightly uncomfortable ( somewhere along the lines of embarrassed, reluctant ) but it was better than the alternative. one that she wouldn’t even dare to think about—because what if it came back? it might lead her into crumpling the parchment beneath her palms into a ball and setting it on fire. the entire library could go up in flames too, but maddison knew that this place wasn’t the last thing that kept them close.

she could… no, even if she tried to take away his leadership in an effort to destroy him out of spite, maddison had begrudgingly accepted the truth: he’d earned it, it was his. maddison was only a step above him in importance, anyway. she probably wouldn’t even be able to do it… 

maddison hadn’t realized it until she tasted the metal in her mouth that she had been biting down on her lip, watching him. “you can keep thinking that all you like—but i already have.” she said through gritted teeth. not fully, but some. anger came, and maddison catered to it. “there are other people like you, you know. people who i can look to for other options, other opinions. i don’t need you.” she hoped—she prayed—that there wasn’t a single faltering in her voice. maddison didn’t always think of cress as a vexing presence. sometimes, having him around was as close to a sick kind of comfort that maddison knew she disallowed herself to have. still, that wasn’t true. he was one of their leaders—and she couldn’t leave him with the thought that he wasn’t as important as the rest of them. it wouldn’t make anything better for her, but it would make things worse. “not all that much,” she added after a short beat of silence. “not for this, not really.” 

it was, though, maddison thought. she and her sisters didn’t have birthday parties but at some point, she learned that they were a big deal—for most muggleborns, for most people who had plenty of friends, for cress who seemed to have been affected by it enough that he was acting like that. maddison stared at him, and she wondered if leander knew—he would’ve baked something for cress, if he had, right? "you’re probably right,” she relented. “who needs a massive event to tell you how old you are? it also seems a little rude—no one wants to reminded how close they are to old age.”

her voice faltered once, twice, and cress gritted his teeth. if he had been looking at her, he would have tried to identify her tells. she bit her lip, sometimes, she touched her hair. but he hadn’t. so he had to go off only what he knew: she did need him.

‘or rather, he just knew that he wanted her to.

sure, she could get anyone else to help her decipher the book. there were thousands of people, experts really, who could do just as good a job (if not better) as a barely-17-year-old ravenclaw. but that wasn’t the point.

“you’re right, bulstrode. there are other options,“ he said quietly, bitterly, “but none are like me.“

it was a selfish, possessive, ugly thought, he knew, but it was not just arrogance that made him say it. it was the pounding in his chest, the desperate need for him to matter as much to her as she did to him. 

his whole life he had been a ravenous thing, hungry and wanting, always reaching for more. he had always been alone and he had contented himself with that. it had been such a simple thing. but, somewhere, along the lines, things had changed. he had met his match and their paths had intertwined. like ivy, the two of them grew together, ever upwards towards the sun.

yes, maddison was cruel. he had been on the receiving end of her bluntness far too many times to deny that. but that was not all she was. despite the sharpness of her teeth and the cut of her claws, she was no ordinary monster. behind her sly smiles and unforgiving iniquity, was a girl for whom tenderness had not yet forsaken, who had accepted him first, however begrudgingly and skeptically it had been. 

and, while it was not enough for him to forgive every time she had let genie or gemma steamroll him in the de meetings, it was enough for him to forgive her now. with shaking fists, he reached for the textbook he had no hope of reading, tried to still the anger he knew he had no right to, but still felt nonetheless. 

“after all,“ he tried to make his tone upbeat, cast off the uncomfortable air with a teasing jibe, “who else is going to explain everything twice just so you can follow?”

Gemma wasn’t sure what exactly it was—maybe the triumph running through her veins at getting one over on the MA, or the fact that at this very moment Zeke and Eden were undoubtedly making Lily Potter wish she’d never been born—or maybe it was the almost subservient cast to Cress’ begrudging civility; he may technically be a leader, but they both knew Cress never was, and never would be, her equal.

So she was gracious—-outwardly, anyway. “Thanks.” Taking a sip, she gave him a sideways glance, the look on her face all but confirming just how swimmingly the night had gone. “Silver lining, right? Though maybe Ravenclaw had an unfair advantage—-Scorpius’ eyesight clearly isn’t what it used to be, if his choice in rebound is anything to go by.”

Silence spread between them for a few moments, before Gemma spoke again. “I have had quite a productive evening. It’s my mother’s birthday soon, so I ordered her a bouquet. Orange lilies are her favorite, and so hard to come by this time of year. But I managed.”

It took a moment for the news to sink in. Not much had been obscured in Gemma’s thinly-veiled double speak, but Cress still needed a moment to parse through the message. To be sure.

On the surface, as the realization of what they had all done hit him, Cress remained studiously unperturbed. He lifted his glass of firewhiskey in the air in a mock toast, before setting it back down on the table without taking a sip. However, Cress found that his true feelings about the subject were—a little more complicated.  

In the multifarious wave of emotion that has welled up, he found the expected reactions: triumph, giddiness, joy, relief. But there was something else there too, lurking darkly behind them.

It wasn’t the feeling of before. No, the nerves of not knowing, the bitterness at having being left out-- those hadn’t disappeared entirely, but they weren’t of importance. It wasn’t even the fact that, somewhere not too deep down, he wished that Gemma would choke on her drink and spare the rest of the world the burden of ridding her from it themselves. No, that feeling was nothing new.

No, Cress felt remorse. For some reason or another, he suddenly felt bad for Lily Potter. He was complicit in everything, had known what was going to happen, had even volunteered to carry it out himself-- and, yet, he could not help the way the last remains of his own humanity roared to life when he pictured her, a girl that he had all too much disdain for, plucked from her idyllic life.

Knowing is a privilege, he had always maintained, but it came with a price. And, in this moment, with the knowledge of the senseless things that had and had yet to occur weighing heavily on his mind, he wondered, not for the first time, but hopefully the last, if the cost was too high. 

“I know it will be worth it,” he said aloud, more to remind himself than anything else, “I’m sure, knowing all the work you’ve put it, your mother will appreciate the gift all the more.” he cast his eyes down, before tacking on contemplatively, “Here’s to hoping that everything is in good hands from here on out. I’ve handled flowers before. They do so easily- get crushed.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw a flash of red hair hitting the ground. He pressed his lips together. Sorry, Potter, but you knew what it meant when you signed up to be a MA leader. We all have to do what must be done. 

in one of those documentaries his parents watched, he had seen the aftermath of a tornado. the television screen surveying the wreckage, cress had looked on to see a house overturned, trees snapped in half, an entire field destroyed-- destruction the only remnant of where life had used to be. 

the narrator (a stilted man with a deep voice) had gone into the anatomy of the disaster. with winds that could well into the hundreds, carving out a spiral of chaos into the stratosphere, a tornado was many things: dangerous, deadly, inevitable. it sowed discord wherever it touched down. but even so, the man noted,  tucked in the coils of the windstorm, dead center, there was still a reprieve. in the eye of the tornado, the winds were still. in this place, the narrator had said, there was still peace.

elsewhere in the castle, a girl was missing. her friends and family were telling each other off, were running themselves ragged, were working themselves into a whirlwind of frustration trying to find her. it was a tipping point of sorts, a declaration of open hostility, a... change in the winds, so to speak. soon, the whole castle would be upturned, cress was certain. the winds of change would leave nothing be.   

but--- (for now, at least) here, in ravenclaw tower, in the eye of the hurricane, there was still peace. 

cress had managed to make it another round without a gobstone spurting him in the face. letting out a curt exhale, he looked down at the board in both mild distaste and good humot, before nudging it towards kian. “your turn, greyback. just--- remind me why we’re playing this instead of wizarding chess again?”

cress placed the near-full cup of firewhiskey back on the table. 

had it been his choice, he would have stayed away entirely from the drink. he had no taste for it. however, earlier on in the evening, a fellow ravenclaw intent on making the most of the festivities and spreading their insobriety, had insisted on pouring him a cup, shoving it in his hands and watching him down a few perfunctory throat-burning gulps before wandering back off into the crowd. 

he had put the cup down, because his stomach was churning. but, even he knew that, as much as it was unwise to drink on an empty stomach, those swallows of firewhiskey were not what was making him uneasy.

the victory on the quidditch field today had felt- oddly hollow. these past few weeks, he had caught himself wondering errantly if he was growing out of quidditch and, today, had only really been another page in the case for it. after all, he had spent the entire time in the air wishing he was somewhere else. and now, surrounded by people who were all to happy to congratulate him on what he had done that day, he could not help but think only of what he had not been doing. 

right on cue, a familiar silhouette manifested beside him. wordlessly, he spelled one of the bottles of firewhiskey to lift itself and fill another one of the empty cups on the table. a twitch of his fingers, the cup floated gently towards the girl. 

“drink?” he offered, thin-lipped. as much as gemma didn’t care for him, he still had to try. the onus was always on him to be civil. “slytherin may have lost tonight, but there are still things to celebrate.”

he wanted nothing more than to ask her the pressing questions on his mind. but this crowded room was hardly the place. “at least malfoy lost, right?” there was a smirk on his face,  “i hope skipping the match was worth it. if i’m quite honest, sometimes, i wish i could do the same. i could get so many things done.”

Roxanne wasn’t petty. At least, that was what she told herself whenever she felt bad about herself, because the clear truth was that she was petty — but only when people deserved it. And Cress Lee? Cress Lee deserved all the pettiness that was left in her body, and more. So yes — Roxanne made him do extra laps and was harder on him than she was on the rest of her team, and sometimes she felt bad about it ( which made her question herself, and then that made her question herself, and then she told her brain to shut up because Cress had hurt her way more, right? Right. ).

At his accusation, however, she crossed her arms. “Paranoid much, Lee? I’m just trying to push you. Make you better. Make sure that you’ll keep Slytherin’s quaffles out of those hoops so that we can win.” She took a step closer. “It’s not personal — it’s Quidditch.” She sounded confident,  but she questioned herself. Cress had a point; this wasn’t good captaincy. She wouldn’t admit to that, though, and just kept her arms crossed, her expression daring Cress to go against her. Because, in all truth, that was just what she wanted — to yell at him, to rage, to tell him that she still hurt when she saw him. To fight. To talk. 

“we will win,” he insisted, before muttering under his breath, “though maybe we shouldn’t.”

it wasn’t that he didn’t love quidditch or that he didn’t want to win. there were few things that gave him a joy even comparable to flying and the thrill of competition. it was just that- there were other games he had to play now. and navigating through the muddy waters that were his and roxanne’s relationship was more trouble than it was worth most times.  

“is it, though?” he said through gritted teeth, “is it just quidditch?”

looking at her, cress couldn’t help but think of how things used to be: how they had been friends once, and, even more importantly, how he had really thought that roxanne understood---  and how when she hadn’t, it had felt like the biggest betrayal of all. how had it all gotten to this? these days, she was barely more than a stranger to him.

with a start, he realized that he missed her friendship more than anything--- and he was ashamed that he did. 

“the rox i knew wasn’t this petty,” he spat, “if you want me to quit the team, if you can’t handle it-” cress jutted out his chin in petulance, dared her to take him on, “then say it. else you’re more of a coward than i thought you were.”

hm, perhaps she should’ve saved it until much later. her own handwriting was staring at her in judgement—waiting for her to continue—but cress had become more of a distraction than… well, that was her own fault for thinking that he would be helpful somehow. he had his uses, all of which had either gone into hiding or vanished completely today. she shook her head at him, though she spoke with an effortless grin. “you’re resorting to mocking my capabilities now? that won’t make you any smarter than anyone—” she shook the feather of her quill at him, “and it surely won’t make you any better than me.” maddison pondered whether she should hex him into silence for the time being. ten minutes, that was all she needed.

then, she made the mistake of looking up at the wrong time—and she bit her tongue, hard. in the back of her mind, she scrawled a reminder not to choose seats close to the windows. hell, she should just go back to sitting in the dim, between the shelves, without him. “a shame. we could’ve gotten you cake,” she said. “or some other thing you must fancy.” happy birthday still seemed to be stuck somewhere in her mouth.

maddison didn’t want to call attention to his amusing, otherwise baffling, clamour for words—but she did, anyway. “are you alright?” she laughed, and she risked it to watch the boy across from her. enough. she needed to get this paper done, yet she couldn’t resist the wide, aching smile that softened the more rough hallmarks that she’d inherited from her father’s family. “of course, cress. by then, i’ll probably have figured it all out by myself—then i’ll just have the sole pleasure of getting to watch you struggle.” 

“you would like that, wouldn’t you?” he fired back quickly, “i always had you pegged for a sadist. it’s why i-”

he had nearly recovered their usual rhythm and rapport when he caught sight of the smile on her face. his mouth snapping shut, he trailed off in the middle of his sentence, finding that he had no recollection whatsoever of what he had been about to say. it was entirely her fault. it had been shocking, after all, he rationalized, any sane person would have been taken aback too. no one expected someone who came from a family of such ugly toads to have such a nice smile.

with that established, the (absolutely normal) shock at her surprising un-toadliness had left his mouth feeling very dry. cress found himself wishing for either a glass of water or for it to be socially acceptable to aguamenti himself in the face. as it was, having calculated the risk, he was strongly favoring the latter. while its ability to quench his thirst was dubious, it would certainly allow for him to make a… perhaps not more graceful, but certainly less graceless exit from the conversation.

“i-” he tried again, but he caught a glimpse of the book again and he had nothing to say. his fingers itched to open it again, to start work right then and there. cress would have put money down to say that there was likely a double-layered protection rune somewhere in the first few pages (these kind of things always did). he checked the clock. he wondered if she’d be impressed, if he cracked it in the next few minutes. it was reward enough on its own to solve any puzzle that need solving, but, if she would tilt the corner of her lips upwards again in approval, it would be-

it would be-

a trick. it would be a trick.

having purposely avoided looking at her for a long enough time that his rationality had returned, he felt a twinge of shame in his chest. maddison and the rest of the leaders so very rarely gave him credit when it was due. maddison was a slytherin. she had ulterior motives. nothing in this world came freely. it was likely all some calculated scheme to try to make him act a fool. was he so desperate for their approval that a thin-lipped grin was enough to send into a flurry? he frowned.

“you wouldn’t make any headway without me and you know it. i don’t have to prove myself as better when the truth is so plainly obvious: my grades in runes are always better than yours and i hardly even have to try,” he tried to sound more callow than he had before, but the delivery was off.

“you think everyone deserves to have magic, right? they don’t.”  molly mused, flexing her left hand, the unspoken who behind the they hanging in between her and cress like a lead curtain. her eyes fixed on a point across the room but she wasn’t seeing anything outside of her mind’s eye – a vision of herself, healed, able to work on her charms and test them too. “i’m living proof of that. or dead proof, if some people get to have their way.” 

molly slid the notebook back in front of herself, shoulders hunched. cress’ direct brand of criticism didn’t surprise her, but it didn’t make her feel good, considering the type of day she was having. “i understand what you’re saying. some questions: if i modify a petrificus, and leave whatever i’m casting on – for the sake of this argument, let’s say a dragon, and their internal affairs are all in working order, then do i have to worry about that dragon being able to breathe fire? is that when stunning becomes more useful and then defeats my purpose of trying to find a non-violent way of handling them?” 

realizing the futility of that particular project, she sighed, then turned to something she felt was more promising. for a moment, she hesitated, knowing full well that cress could see something in her work she didn’t and go running back to his scummy death eater friends, but she needed an extra pair of eyes on this. “okay. here’s this – a modified shield charm. i’d like it to absorb the impact rather than reflect it. there’s hundreds of documented cases where bystanders are hit by spells that bounce off of shields. i want – i want to modify it –” she pointed at her scrawlings that read patronus?? long-lasting. “–to last longer. like armour. that way you’d only have to cast it periodically. it could survive on its own for a bit. that is, of course, depending on the skill of the caster.” 

he objected. clearly. but he had been in the room when her magic hadn’t worked.  that’s what he was thinking of now.

the gut-wrenching desperation in her voice. it had cut through the silence like a knife. and he could not-- he would not-- ever understand why someone who believed so adamantly that they were in the right would want to put that pain on anyone else.

“it’s a trade you have to make. for dragons, you might need a specific variant. but it might work for other things. things that don’t spit poison or fire.”

there were proposals he had-- for certain, a rune to bind the organs of flame creation, the use of other protective gear to extinguish the fires. however, he said none of them, allowed the conversation to lapse back into silence as he stared at her arm. by the time, he looked up to meet molly’s gaze, he wasn’t thinking about the freezing spell at all.

“it’s a judgment call,“ he said finally, though his voice was shaky, “that’s why there’s usually teams of people to decide the ethics of a spell before widespread implementation.sure, stunning is cruel. but, in the end, magic doesn’t give anyone much a choice in anything.” he turned over his own wand in his hand, “in some ways, it’s all cruelty.”

he looked at where she was pointing in the notebook, read the line she had jabbed at and promptly stiffened. 

”that’s a defense spell,” he said finally, the meaning behind the innocuous words unsaid but apparent. you said it yourself, molly, we’re on opposite sides. i may have initiated the armistice, but i didn’t think we were going to talk about anything we could really use. 

though, he shifted uncomfortable, the seed of an idea for the charm already sprouting in his thoughts,  i want to. i really really want to.