#para01

It was no lie that Everett wanted to fuck Kurt Hummel. They had hit it off instantly upon his arrival to Stonewall and he was not going to deny the beautiful switch the pleasure of being with him. 

Everett sent Kurt a message, telling him to show up onto his suite and waited for the handsome young male. He was wearing some black yoga pants and nothing else, after all, his room was warm enough. 

Bree’s fingers thumped softly against the canvas of her camping chair, competing with the crackling bonfire in front of her and the chirps and trills of Oregon wildlife. The day’s earlier chaos of hosting and talking and cooking had faded, leaving her more or less alone with her thoughts. The exact thing she’d been trying to avoid by throwing the cookout in the first place. It was no surprise that her wandering thoughts and the warm buzz of alcohol were a barrier, refusing to let her absorb the question asked by the only other person left in her yard.

“Sorry?” She redirected her attention to the pretty blonde sitting next to her, blinking away the spots in her vision from staring at the fire too long.

Blake gave one of her charming smiles. “I asked how the deli was doing.” As always, Bree felt a small thrill at the sound of her accent, something that even working long days together hadn’t stolen.

The question felt wrong sounding so pretty. Especially when it was the very thing she was trying to avoid. Bree slunk further into her seat, turning her gaze back to the fire. Any other day, she’d give a non-committed answer, but anxiety and alcohol were a potent force, pulling the truth from her.

“It’s falling apart,” she told the flames. “The building was old when Mook bought it and now… It’s basically decrepit. You worked there.” Bree lifted one shoulder in defeat. “Don’t know how much longer I can feasibly stay open, to be honest.”

Cold permeated the air thicker than he could ever remember for September through all of his years at Hogwarts.  The wind whistled as it blew over the open expanse of the lake, thunder rumbled beyond the mountains, and a chorus of frogs sounded directly underneath Harry’s window. He laid in bed, staring blankly at the unfamiliar stone ceiling, listening to the maddening and unusual noises of the school’s lake side. He missed being in Gryffindor Tower, where his room had faced Hagrid’s hut and the quidditch pitch and the Whomping Willow. All the comforts that had enticed him to come back for eighth year seemed to have evaporated, leaving only the same disconcert that had plagued him for months during the war.

 There was a loud splash under his window and his weary mind immediately filled with images of the Giant Squid weaving a tentacle around the now silent frogs. There would be no sleeping tonight now that the thought was in his mind. Sighing, Harry eased himself slowly out of bed. He was unsuccessful in preventing the slow creeak that all the beds in South Tower seemed to have, but neither Neville nor Dean stirred at the noise. They seemed to be adjusting to post-war life and the nuances of their new home just fine. They were sleeping well, at least. Harry sank his feet into his house slippers, wishing he could say the same. 

He walked carefully towards the common room, fingers wrapped around the shaft of his wand, heartbeat racing for no reason. There were no secret dangers lurking in the halls at Hogwarts now, as Hermione was quick to remind him, but years of experience told him otherwise. Some habits were just too hard to kill. With his back pressed into the cool stone of the hallway, Harry glanced cautiously around the corner, ready to assume a battle stance at once. But there was no need. The common room was empty, just as it had been every other night since arriving back at Hogwarts. 

His grip relaxed marginally on his wand, and he headed towards an ottoman that he’d come to think of as his. Harry couldn’t help but wonder if they had pulled the thing right out of the Slytherin common room; it was two and a half feet tall, twice as long, and made of the softest velvet in a green so dark it was nearly black. If he tried hard enough, he could probably curl his six-foot frame up and take a nap on the thing. The moment he sank into the plush material, Harry’s shoulders relaxed, and he allowed his wand to sink back into his robes. The ottoman coupled with the warmth of the fire and the 2:00 am solitude had an effect on him that was almost… Well, magical. 

Tension drained out of his shoulders. Suddenly, Harry felt like he could take on anything. Even if he hadn't had more than a couple of hours of sleep in over a week. He could roam the halls like he used to do, or visit Hagrid. Maybe he could even try to look into the four new Hogwarts professors. They seemed suspiciously close, closer than any of the other Hogwarts professors for sure, and Harry didn't like that one bit. Any other time that a teacher had acted out of the ordinary, there had been a plot underway. Voldemort was gone, yes, but that didn’t mean the world had been cured of evil. Harry was sure they were up to something. Maybe if he could prove it early on, the rest of the year could be peaceful.

Hermione’s face floated through his mind, scowling in disapproval. Harry had made his case to her against the new teachers already and her response had been to scoff and roll her eyes. “Your proof is that they’re friendly with one another? Harry, I know that you’re still in fight-for-your-life mode, but they’re just teachers. Good ones, I might add. The ministry has been rounding up all of You-Know-Who’s supporters. With Kingsley as minister, we know that they’re going to do the job right this time. Do you want me to make you a Calming Draught?” If she found out that he’d gone sneaking about the castle, Harry knew she’d be starking mad. Besides, he supposed that the chances of the professors being in the halls at this time seemed unlikely. 

Harry decided to put the mystery out of his mind for the moment. He would keep an eye on them during class and in the halls, the best he could anyways, and come back to Hermione with more proof. There would be more proof.

What could he do in the meantime? 

Homework? Perhaps, but they’d only been back to school for a week. The load was still light and with no Quidditch or evil-doings to distract him, Harry had gotten most of his work done already. All that was left to do was to have Hermione check over everything to make sure he hadn’t made any idiotic errors. She would be able to do that during breakfast, easily.

There was always the pen pal program that McGonagall had mentioned at the start of term feast. Harry still hadn’t written a letter to his parchmate, nor had he received one. Hermione had already written quite the lengthy letter to her parchmate. Whoever she was paired with hadn’t responded either. Harry suspected it was because of the length, but she was already working on a second letter for fear of failing. Nobody was sure how the program would factor into grades, just that it was mandatory to pass.

A simple summoning charm later and Harry had the charmed parchment and a quill in his hands. “Okay,” he thought. “Letter writing. That’s simple enough, just talk about…” What? He wasn’t actually sure what someone normally wrote in a letter. Surely writing about getting attacked and painful curse scars wasn’t the norm? Outside of a few brief answers to his friends and Dumbledore, that was the only history Harry had in writing letters. 

Several topics ran through his mind, all of them small talk and none of them substantial enough to carry a conversation. The weather? Lousy, worse than it had been in his living memory. The school? Different in too many ways. With no other ideas, Harry jotted down the first thought that came to his mind. I’m going to miss playing quidditch this year. The ink shimmered on the page for a moment and then vanished without a trace. A sick, creeping sensation gnawed at his stomach as the image of a diary filled his mind. Seconds passed in rapid heart beats as Harry expected the small, spidery writing of Tom Riddle to answer him. After several long moments, he finally accepted that it was just a spell, nothing more. He made a mental note to warn Ginny about it; her reaction would be ten times worse than his had been and he wanted her to be prepared.

So, no quidditch talk then. Fair enough. It would probably be easy to pinpoint who was writing based on that, Harry supposed. The only returning eighth years who had played on the house teams were Dean, Malfoy, and himself. Harry heaved a sigh. Sure, he was the boy-who-defeated-Voldemort, but apparently a bloody letter was going to be his downfall. 

It reminded him of a rant that Hermione had gone on earlier in the week when Neville had asked her how to write a letter. “Have you noticed that Hogwarts has never taught us any everyday skills? Most wizards communicate through owl post, but students are never even given an introduction to the most basic fundamentals of the skill. You know, I read a report that says floo calls are becoming more popular in younger generations because they simply don’t know how to communicate through the written word. As the premiere wizarding school in Europe, you would think that there would be more foresight into teaching secondary skills.” 

Before he really knew what he was doing, Harry was copying down what he could remember of Hermione’s speech onto the parchment, peppered with his own asides. The words stayed shining on the page. He sighed, this time in relief, and rolled the letter up and tossed it into the parchmates collection bin. 

Relief quickly turned to guilt though. Hermione has always been extremely anti-plagiarism. Would copying down her words in a letter count in her mind as plagiarism? He didn’t think so, but his thoughts so often turned out to be wrong. If anything, he was giving his parchmate the completely wrong idea about what to expect during their time writing to each other and he didn’t want to do that either. He didn’t know what to say, but Harry liked the idea of being able to write to someone in an anonymous setting. That someone would like him or hate him based on his own merits and not because he was some kind of wizarding messiah. 

@milajai

Andrew sighed, holding tightly to his backpack as he walks into the library. “Glad I didn’t remember this place.” He muttered under his breathe as he looks around the library. It has been a few month since he been back in school, let alone a library. Either way, he knew it was time to catch up on his work. He raises his hand to wave at a teammate of his as he notice a young lady sitting down in a chair near a bookcase. He tilts his head, looking at her, trying to remember if he knows her or not. He chews on his bottom lip before deciding to walk over to her. “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you but I think I know you from somewhere.” He said to her as he continues. “But I’m guessing we had a class together right?

She could still hear the rain battering her windshield, the crash of thunder, the screech of tires, the blaring horns, the crunch of metal, the wail of sirens.  She could still smell burnt rubber, the distinct tang of iron and something else entirely undistinguishable she could only describe as death.  She could still feel the way her seat belt braced for impact, the explosion of the airbag against her body, the way certain bones in her body snapped so easily.  She could see the headlights from the truck that came out of no where... she could still taste the blood... she could still experience that night just by closing her eyes.

It had been six full years since she’d seen her little sister; they’d been some of the best and most difficult years of her life.  Marrying Meredith had been the best choice she’d ever made but that relationship cost her the one she had with Evan and that loss in itself had been even more painful than the death of their father back when she was 18. 

The woman found herself on a doorstep she swore she’d never step foot on.  She wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten here but here she was.  Her opinion had always been- if Evangeline wanted a relationship then she never would have left... then she would have tried to make an effort but instead the girl moved out of the fucking state and Henri wasn’t about to reward that kind of behavior with groveling, they were both too stubborn for their own good.  It was the middle of the night 1:43 AM to be precise.  For the first minute she simply knocked.  She knew her sister was there.  Soon she found herself banging on the door, dead set on waking the younger woman.

Since it’s opening, Dalton Academy was known as one of the best boarding schools for boys; it was known for turning immature teens into men by graduation and it was yet to be let down by either a current or past student. Sebastian was one of their many Freshman students and it was safe to say he had started as one of the most arrogant of the pack and had already managed to down himself down enough for people to see his humility and realise that deep down he wasn’t such an asshole after all. 

Amazingly, his humble side had a lot of people fawning over him, but nobody caught his eye quite like Blaine Anderson; Blaine was a year ahead of him and he was the type of person to give everyone a chance, and that’s exactly what he did with Sebastian. He didn’t tell him to get lost when he tried to act all tough during Warbler practice, he didn’t lose his cool and tell him not to speak to him ever again. No, Blaine Anderson simply gave Sebastian Smythe a chance. Sebastian was originally from France and English wasn’t his first language and Blaine found a way to put himself in the younger boy’s shoes; how hard it must’ve been to leave his home, friends and other family members behind for an entirely new place where he now had to learn English even more than he had been back home in school. 

Skip almost four months later and here Sebastian was, he had more than one friend and his crush on Blaine Anderson soon turned from a dream to a reality; their feelings for one another had been mutual and almost after a month of regularly spending time together and tutoring and Warbler practice, they officially became an exclusive couple and they’ve been going strong for the past three months. 

It was the first lunch break of the day and Sebastian was quick on his heels to get to his boyfriend’s Numeracy Class so he could greet him and spend lunch together. Sure, it was only fifteen minutes, but something in the fifteen-year-old’s gut was telling him to cherish every moment he got to spend with his boyfriend today. It wasn’t this nagging feeling that was bothering him, he was just taking it as not being as loving as Blaine had been to him. He wanted to show his romantic side for once, he wanted to treat his boyfriend and show him just how romantic he could truly be when he really wanted to.

But if only he knew that nagging feeling in his gut was so much more than what he thought it was. It was only a matter of time...

There was a chill in the air.  That was an odd sensation for a supposedly summer’s day but being in the midst of hurricane season meant the weather could throw a tantrum at any moment and throw off a whole damn week of sunshine.  She didn’t care for the sunshine anyway.  She preferred days like today- rainy, stormy, cloudy, windy, chilly- it almost felt like fall if you closed your eyes. With an imagination as vivid as Matilda’s she could even pretend, just for a moment, that she was back in Ireland.

The train ride from Philadelphia to Boston was a whopping six hours but that was surely better than the possibility of getting stuck in traffic on the megabus.  Traffic was a sore spot for Mattie, she’d discovered recently that it is entirely possible to get road rage from the passenger’s seat.  Since the car accident back when she was 14 she’d refused to get a license.  Losing your mother to the carelessness of a drunk driver was enough to scar any teen for life but then add on the fact that she’d nearly died in said accident and it was a whole other story.  She’d been put into a medically induced coma after that for nearly a month which was pretty rare but she had a lot of healing to do both internally and externally.  Moving in with her father and step mother hadn’t been ideal.  While she’d loved him very very much, her relationship with Addison was strained on its best days.  Since his death they’d barely spoken, barely seen one another, caught up on major holidays and birthdays they were civil and friendly but... the blonde had been very much a part of her Dad and it hurt her heart to be reminded that at age twenty she was orphaned.  Going back to Brookline was something she hadn’t done since Henry had been laid to rest and that in itself had her nervous.

When she’d joined connections she was in Ireland.  She knew she was coming back to the states and thought it couldn’t hurt to look and see what was out there.  A month had gone by and she hadn’t found anyone of interest and literally the day she considered leaving the site for good, MistressHadley lit up her inbox with a message that had intrigued her.  From that day on they’d spoken every day... it had been six months and they were finally meeting face to face.  Miss Hadley never pushed her for photos of her face, she never pushed to cam- Mattie had weird phobias about what she put out on the internet and the woman seemed to understand completely.  With the woman’s birthday nearing and the fact that they were both finally sharing a coast, they’d mutually agreed that ‘Taylor’ would take the train up and stay the weekend.  School was out until Fall semester anyway.

Matilda smoothed her hands down the unwrinkled material of the dark floral dress for the umpteenth time and took a deep steadying breath as the conductor announced that they’d be pulling into the station.  Dark eyes glanced up and a single digit pushed those red rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose.  The butterflies swarmed in her stomach in a frenzied dance as the train pulled to a complete stop with a hiss and whine.  Grabbing her overnight bag, she slung it over her shoulder and headed to the exit.  Black and white lowtop converse found solid ground and she breathed a little easier.  As she made her way up the stairs, hidden in a crowd of people, dark eyes found that rose held between slender digits.  Biting down gently into her lower lip, she allowed her gaze to travel up and her breath hitched at the sight of the woman in the plaid top and three inch stilettos... Addison.  

It took her a moment for the shock to settle but she had to think quick on her feet.  Ripping the glasses from her face, she shoved them into a small pocket of her bag and zipped it closed.  Swallowing hard, she watched her step mother for a long silent moment, how had this actually happened to her?!  Of all the fucking people in the world, this woman was the woman she’d been submitting to and crushing on?  This was the woman she’d been getting to know on such a personal level?  It was hard to wrap her mind around but as time ticked by and the place began to empty of the passengers from Philadelphia she could see the woman’s face fall ever so slightly, she could see her demeanor shift.  Addison had always been good at putting up a front but after living with her for so many years Mattie could read the subtle shifts that no one should have been able to and just as the woman turned away she made a decision.  

Mattie went to walk past her as if she were heading out to get a cab and bumped into her gently.  “Sorry, god I’m clumsy, I-”  She looked up and her worried expression morphed into a somewhat surprised smile as dark eyes gazed up.  “What’re you doing here?  I was just about to-”  The younger girl gestured to the door that led out to the cabs.  “I was gonna surprise you.”  Mattie shook her head some.  “For your birthday.”  Finally taking a moment to breathe she let out an almost shy laugh and tucked a few strands behind her ear.  “Oh!...-oh, god... you must be waiting on someone.  Fuck... I should have called.”  As that espresso stare finally settled on green she stopped rambling, a silence settling between them... she offered that lopsided smile.  “Hey Addi... happy birthday.”