motivate, inspire

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. 

“you didn’t-” he cleared his throat, feigning disinterest out of politeness, offering her the chance to change the topic, “you didn’t mean to talk about anything else?”

“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.” 

WHERE: library, hogwarts WHEN: march 6, afternoon WHO: open to hogwarts students, professors

even when the whole castle is in a ruckus, rosemary took comfort in consistent, normal things: tending to the greenhouses, going to class, studying in the library. she had lost track of how long she had been in the library. it had been long enough for the sun to start setting, and she found herself drawing a line through her notes in a daze before realizing someone was standing in front of her table.

“oh, am i taking up too much space? i can clear some room if you’d like to sit.”

“that’s like, a fucked up thing to say,” molly said around the licorice wand clenched between her teeth - she resisted the urge to chomp down on it in full view of madam pince, lest the strict librarian find out it was candy. “own your space! i mean, i know you didn’t mean it in a self-demeaning way, but still. and yeah, i would like to sit - everywhere else is full.” 

“i wasn’t aware we won that contest. is simon cowell giving us a record deal?” 

“you think– this is what i want?“ he gestured at her arm in a jerky motion, before his jaw clenched and he lapsed into silence. “you’re wrong-”

the world he imagined— there was no room for that kind of cruelty there. all he had ever asked for was the unmitigated benefaction of magic. the absence of i— as he knew all too well— was a curse too many had to suffer.

his face darkened.  with gritted teeth, he ducked his head back down at the paper in front of them.  an uncomfortable silence settled over the room. if this had been a year ago, he would have said any of the things running through his head. but it wasn’t. and cress thought first of the people he had sworn his loyalty to and the way what he might have said would sound to them.

the corner of his lips twitched downwards. 

“it doesn’t matter anyways if you can cast or not,“ he said, crossing his arms, “i think you’re going about this the wrong way.”

“ you need something like a curse. the base properties of the immobulus charm are too unsuited for your purposes. it’s weak for a reason. it freezes the insides and the outside only for a short period of time. there’s a hundred reasons it won’t work for larger creatures— the amount of power needed to make it work? the damage that might be done if it wears off? you’ll end up with a death sentence for the caster or the creature.  for your application, i’d modify a petrificus totalus– something that, by nature, works only on the outside. and continues to work— until the countercharm is deployed.” 

“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?” 

seduce, steal from, serenade

“it’s not,“ he said sharply. 

the words rang out louder than he had intended them to in the empty charms classroom. pausing, he took a shaky breath inwards,rubbed his hands self-consciously. “what i’m trying to say is that- it might feel that way, but it’s not missing. it’s not gone. you’re not a squib. you’re not a muggle. you’re just– temporarily inconvenienced.“

he found himself sitting atop a desk, legs crossed, only a few feet away from molly. he looked pointedly anywhere but her. 

“and i’m sure it sucks harder than a vampire. and i wouldn’t trade place with you in a thousand years, but my father says that magic is-”

cress cut himself off. he looked down. 

“never mind. it’s not really important what he has to say,“ he shifted uncomfortably, changing the subject. looking pointedly at her notebook, he tilted his head, “is that what you’re working on?”

“no offense,” molly began, though the level of attitude behind her words meant that cress was going to come up against her signature bluntness: “--but why do you care? i get that magical studies is your--” she waved a hand at him “--thing. it’s pretty hard to ignore the amount of theory you spout on the daily, but...”  we’re on different sides. you’ve burned some bridges. i don’t know if i can trust you. molly let those words remain unspoken.

grateful for the subject change, the young witch began shuffling through her notes, trying to find something of note that wasn’t going to be passed onto the M.A. “this is what i was working on for my independent charms study project, yeah.” the page detailed the immobulus charm and some proposed incantation changes at the bottom. “currently, the freezing charm doesn’t work on living creatures bigger than a pixie -- you have to stun someone or use a jinx or curse to really incapacitate them. while i’m not keen on using a freezing charm on humans, it might be a better alternative than, say, using a stunner or chains on something like a griffin or a runespoor.”

kill, betray, have on your zombie apocalypse team

“Kill Rose, betray Louis, have Lucy as my ride-or-die zombie-killing bitch.” 

Ly was initially a few rows back in the class, vaguely attempting to work on the practical assigned, mostly watching the few others in class of interest to him. Yet his eyes wandered towards Molly, clearly failing and audibly frustrated. Initially, the Scamander decided to observe rather than intervene, he wasn’t one to get involved in things which didn’t concern him. Yet, at the drop of a wand (literally, this time) he quickly gathered his things and wordlessly slid into the seat next to the Weasley. 

“I’m shit at charms,” the Slytherin offered, “So I can’t really help.” He sent a dirty glare to a few of the less understanding members of their class. “But, I can set a certain someones desk on fire. Accidentally.” He grinned devilishly. “You know, because I’m shit at charms and all that.” 

“But you know, I saw the paper float a bit earlier. So, progress.” 

“Do me a favor and try to aim any and all explosions at Gemma Gamp, m’kay?” Molly sniffled, then aimed a watery smile at Lysander. “I can’t promise you’ll make it out alive but it’d be really chivalrous.” A bolt of pain shot up Molly’s arm from wrist to elbow, and she grimaced. 

“...you don’t need to try and make me feel better,” she added. “I know I suck right now. It’s just difficult to practice when everyone’s eyes are on you...and you’re failing all of your classes...and dark wizards want to kill you and your family...”

schadenfreude. perhaps that’s what would have been expected of him, given their opposition. a bark of cruel laughter and teasing jibe at her misfortune. happiness to see her fail. 

but try as he might to see things differently, there was nothing happy to be found here. the desperation in her voice, the absolutely dismal display of what could only be described as one of the simplest of charms- it caught him off-guard in a way that made his chest ache. 

his parents had told him once that magic was a gift taken all too lightly. and was this not proof? how wretched a wizard was without his magic! how wretched the world was. he looked down at his wand arm and found it clenched into a fist.  

cress cleared his throat, alerting molly to his presence. taking a tentative step forwards, he held up his hands in an armistice he hoped came across. 

“it must- hurt,“ he said slowly, “in more ways that one. i couldn’t imagine how it would feel.“

at the sound of a clearing throat molly tensed, snatching up her wand from the desk with her non-dominant hand and holding it close to her chest. her body language read closed, shoulders held tucked in toward her ears, expecting taunts from her classmate. save for her family members and a handful of ma members she was close with, that was all she’d heard since january. 

looking at cress’ face, though, and hearing the utter sincerity in his voice made molly...uncomfortable. insults she could handle, pity she could withstand, but she didn’t know how to categorize this concern, didn’t know how to respond. she abruptly looked away. “...yeah.” 

she remembered dreaming of the day she’d make it into n.e.w.t.-level charms, having to beg professors for access to the restricted section to work on tinkering with spells, learning obscure charms to bring back to the club. the notebook on top of the stack of supplies in front of her contained countless charts and diagrams, untouched since she discovered how lacking her practical magic skills were.