CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
lover

A SUCKER PUNCH TO THE FACE would've hurt less than returning to Hogwarts. Stepping off the train alone into the Dementor-infested castle grounds felt like walking in with two black eyes and a caved-in chest. In the space between her ribs, Sawyer felt it the moment the Dementors and the darkness trailing them like sleigh dogs drifted closer to the new onslaught of fresh meat, a pack of sharks swarming the sea of returning students pouring out of the train carriages, lugging more baggage than visible to the eye. All those ugly feelings — or non-feelings — piling up like dead bodies, all that animated emotion drifting into the atmosphere like blood in the water. On the crowded platform at King's Cross, even though she knew it was coming, Sawyer hadn't felt the dread setting in just yet, still clinging to that little piece of respite. Mostly because Jeremy and Quinn had swept her up in a tag-team hug so tight she positively felt every single joint in her body crack, and Rio had clapped her so hard on the back as his usual greeting that her lungs had crushed into her ribcage. In return, she'd slammed her elbow into his solar plexus, forcing him back into Marcus, who was talking to someone on his right just as he caught Rio with one hand like he was expecting the repercussions.

Just before they'd boarded, Wyatt had waved goodbye, and Sawyer met his parting gesture with a nod of acknowledgement. Despite how small, how barely noticeable that action was, nobody could miss how instantaneously and vibrantly Wyatt's features lit up just as his friends swept him away before all the good cabins were taken.

"You and your brother are... cool now?" Marcus asked, lifting a brow as he unceremoniously shouldered past a tiny girl struggling with her bags. She let out a cry in protest, but before she could do anything about it, Marcus and Sawyer had been swallowed up by the boarding crowd packing the carriages like sardines. Elbowing someone else out of the way, Sawyer could barely breathe, could barely hear Marcus as he raised his voice over the clamour and calamity of the bustling passengers. "How'd that happen?"

"It just did," Sawyer said, shrugging nonchalantly. And part of it was true. It did just happen. Out of nowhere, something had awakened in Wyatt, terraformed that image in his head that he held of their mother, and he no longer saw her as the woman he'd idealised since forever. At some point that day, he'd taken his hands off his eyes. Sawyer didn't know what had prompted that change of heart, but she wasn't aggrieved by it. Not all mothers were good, but they wouldn't be bad forever. Not all sons were blind, and someday they'll stop protecting the wrong things. Change happened deliberately, relentlessly, and regardless of volition. It was stirring in her mother, and it had shaken something unshakable in Wyatt. Sawyer didn't know if she'd ever forgive her mother the way she could forgive Wyatt, but she also didn't know if she could see that far into the future.

Once they'd secured a cabin, and all five of them had piled in with their bags, Sawyer had been bodily sandwiched herself between Marcus and Rio, who looked marginally less ghastly unlike the last time she'd seen him. Perhaps staying with Marcus had actually did him some good. Perhaps putting on a healthy front for the boy he loved was just a way to cling to his sanity. Either way, it felt good to be with her friends again. Her own house had been suffocating—less so, though, now that her mother wasn't being overbearing in the way she usually was, and Wyatt wasn't her enemy anymore (he never really was, anyway), and there was the chronic case of Oliver, who'd stayed over for three days until his mother demanded he come home, which had been the only time Sawyer had seen him look more annoyed and clammed-up than the time he'd lost the match to Hufflepuff—and leaving that place to come home to the arms of her people felt like a breath of fresh air for a long time of recycling stale tensions.

Throwing open the window just as the train gave a jerk and a animalistic shudder, Quinn grinned and handed out homemade cookies her mother had baked the night before. She'd packaged them into brown bags of five, each a different flavour. The engine gave a hostile hiss and Sawyer had already devoured two.

"These are so fucking good, I could die," Rio moaned, having crammed an earl grey shortbread cookie into his mouth. He shut his eyes and dramatically threw himself across Sawyer's lap, head lolling as his tongue snaked out of his mouth. Laughing, Quinn hid her face behind her hands to obscure her blush, leaning naturally into Jeremy's side. Jeremy tucked her under his arm.

Rolling her eyes at his theatrics, Sawyer punched Rio in the gut without reserve. Immediately riled up and wired for a fight, Rio sprang up and slanted her a glower, but the moment was forgiven when Rio gave the end of Sawyer's ponytail a vicious yank and Marcus ended up having to throw himself between them just as Sawyer wound her arm back to strike Rio back because they were two parts of a tempest and the war that raged between them was often brutal and unrelenting. Chaos was never lacking where they were concerned. And when Rio wolfed down the remaining cookies, he folded the packaging into a neat origami bird and tossed it out the window. Jeremy pinned him with a reproachful look. As the train flashed out of the tunnel and emerged in the countryside, the windows flooding with hills of green and a cloudless sky, Rio returned it with a grin before he stuck his head out the window and opened his mouth like a dog. Lunging forward, Marcus caught the back of Rio's shirt and attempted to reel him back in. Quinn let out a cackle.

"You're really not going to do anything to help?" Marcus asked, turning round to face Sawyer, clearly in distress. But Sawyer had her eyes closed and was slowly dozing off.

Blank-faced and unable to find it in herself to bother even opening her eyes, Sawyer crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. "When a branch finally chops his head off, wake me up."

If only she could find a way to bottle up this string of an hour, this pocket of reprieve from the depression that demanded too much, the bone-splintering anger that consumed her whole, the emptiness that threatened to rip up all the floorboards of the house that stability built. Slowly, she could feel herself running out of room. The break had staved off that feeling as much as it could have, and now that Quinn had confiscated her lighter, there were no more outlets left outside of the violence of fists shattering jaws and a blood-fury tearing through her veins.

A rattle of pills in a bottle brought her back to reality. Sawyer blinked, and realised she was sitting at the Slytherin table, the food just beginning to magically materialise on the table, conjured out of thin air with a sweep of a wand from the teachers' seats, and it wasn't the rattle of pills that'd pulled her out of her bottle-necked reverie by a thread, but the clatter of cutlery against the table. Time seemed to have slipped through her fingers. She didn't remember alighting the train. Didn't remember dumping her luggage in her dorm. Didn't remember changing out of her jeans and sweatshirt into her Hufflepuff robes. Didn't remember coming down to the Great Hall and seating herself at the Slytherin table with her friends.

"Before we begin," Dumbledore said, his raspy voice booming over the Great Hall like thunder, "I'd like to make an announcement for all seventh year students. At the end of the term, once you have completed your examinations, the prefects have organised a themed graduation ball for the class of 1994, and students are free to attend if you wish. However," he levelled the rest of the students with a stern look, "this ball is only limited to seventh year students who will be graduating this year." As soon as the words escaped the Headmaster, the hall immediately erupted into delirious whispers and animated chatter. Sawyer swore she heard someone let out a shrill squeal. Practically vibrating with excitement Quinn grasped Sawyer's sleeve. Sawyer lifted a brow. Quinn beamed. Rio's lip curled in distaste. Dumbledore waved a hand and the students lapsed into a barely muzzled silence. "Over the next two weeks, the prefects will be collecting ballots concerning participation just to get a feel of the numbers, as well as the sort of themes you'd like to see. Since this is committee-funded, tickets will be available after this period. We will have a follow-up announcement then regarding ticket sales. Thank you, and enjoy the feast."

"A ball?" The Slytherin girl sitting beside Sawyer drawled incredulously. Jude Liu was a third year, one of the reserve Chasers on the Slytherin team, and she was rumoured to be the Chinese mafia boss' daughter, but she neither confirmed nor denied it. She wrapped a slender hand around her fork like it was a poisoned dagger, her fingernails, painted a glossy black flashed like talons. "With, like, fancy dresses and shit?"

"I'm assuming, yeah," Marcus said. He narrowed his eyes at her. "But you're not invited, fetus."

Scrunching her nose up, Jude scoffed. "Watch me, Flint."

Rio scoffed. "Your gangster daddy's connections won't sway the prefects. Unless you can get that stick out of all their collective asses."

Jude rolled her eyes. She turned back to her friend, a pale-skinned boy with dark hair and slate grey eyes, who was eyeing Rio with a wary look, like he knew something. The back of her neck prickled, and a pinch in her gut told her something she didn't know was at play was running under her territory, but Sawyer tried to shake it off. It probably wasn't anything worth noticing, anyway. Still, the instinctive feeling persisted. Intuition wasn't one of her greater suits, but Sawyer knew when something was going rotten. Especially when it concerned her friends.

"Apparently Penelope Clearwater organised this," Jeremy piped, a little more optimistically than his friends. "She was pitching the idea to me last semester in Herbology. I'm kind of curious to see how flash they're going. Maybe we'll have a chocolate fountain." He pinned Sawyer with a wide-eyed look. Then his expression turned thoughtful. "I just realised we've literally never seen you in a dress before."

"Don't own one," Sawyer shrugged. Most of her wardrobe consisted of sweatshirts and sweatpants. Comfortable clothing. Comfortable, boring clothing. Maybe she'd grown up a tomboy with perpetually scabby knees and bruised knuckles and almost never brushed her hair voluntarily because she didn't like the feeling of the bristles on her scalp, and she never was one of those girls who could put effort into their appearance everyday because they felt like it.

When she was younger, maybe she might have wanted to be like those white girls in the magazines, the ones who were model-thin and glossy-glistening in their tiny dresses and their gorgeous shoes and golden tans. Who didn't want to be pretty? In a world where everything was about presentation, about performance, where girls had to look a certain way, do things that required effort and time better spent under the covers sleeping the days away—who didn't wish they were born without big bones and bulky calves and a stomach that magically cinched in the right places? Who didn't want the easy solution? The difference between her and those girls was that she never had the energy to do all those things—shop, learn how to contour, dress the way all the pretty girls did—and she wasn't conventionally pretty and if she wasn't in a fist-fight or playing Quidditch there wasn't anyone looking at her.

Therein lay the problem, a shallow pool carrying her distorted reflection. Only once, when she was seven or eight, she might've secretly tried on her mother's lipstick, draped one of her mother's dresses over her underdeveloped chicken-awkward body and tried to envision herself as a model in a cover shoot. And then the discomfort that this wasn't her and the fact that she'd never seen a model with a face like hers on a cover shoot crept in and she'd hastily smudged the lipstick away on the back of her hand and threw the dress back into the closet, the magic of the moment dispelled like mist. Eventually, there were more excuses that piled in, the fact that her only friends had been boys who weren't interested in pampering themselves the way girl friends encouraged each other to for a long while was also an additional factor, and then, gradually, the ultimate question became: why bother? This way, she never had reason to resent herself about her body image. This way, she didn't give herself one more problem like self-consciousness to contend with.

"I don't really wear dresses either," Quinn said, a tiny, tentative look flickering across her face. "Maybe we can go shopping together?"

She'd phrased her offer like a question. It wasn't uncommon knowledge that Quinn didn't have many friends. Before this group, Quinn had no one because she'd always been too shy, too withdrawn to build any bridges. Maybe she'd been waiting for the right time and the right people. But, like Sawyer, she had no one to do all the things most girls did because she didn't have a comfortable network of girl friends to fall back on. Now she had Sawyer. And now, even when she hadn't been consciously looking, Sawyer had Quinn. Call it fate, call it whatever intangible ideology Sawyer didn't believe in, but they'd found each other, and Sawyer didn't want to change anything. This was the comfortable friendship they'd both been starved of.

Flipping her fork over her knuckles, Sawyer shrugged. "Sure."

Elation lit up Quinn's face and Sawyer could see the cogs in her head turning, her entire being buzzing with a feverish ebullience, and her legs bounced so violently and distractingly that Jeremy had to put a hand over her knees to still them.

* * *

SWEAT PLASTERED HER HAIR TO HER FOREHEAD and Sawyer felt the persistent burning in her lungs and muscles well after they'd stopped running to stretch out and catch their breaths. She bent over to touch her toes and felt her entire spine crack like a glow-stick.

In periphery, she caught Oliver shooting her an alarmed look the moment he heard the sound of her joints popping, slicing through the crisp morning air. When she straightened up and pulled her sweatshirt over her head, leaving her in a ratty black shirt she should've thrown out long ago but couldn't bear to part with because it had Ozzy Osbourne's face on the front, Oliver picked up her water bottle from the bench they'd laid out all their things on and tossed it to her. Compared to her, Oliver had fared a lot better during their morning run, probably because he didn't eat every single piece of junk food he laid eyes on, and actually had the self-discipline to continue working out by himself even on the off-season. It was her fault, really. The only time she ever voluntarily bothered with staying in shape was with him. Somehow, by some mystical force of compulsion, his presence alone was enough to make her want to take care of herself, which was a surprising discovery she didn't know what to make of. It was sickening to think about. Which was why she'd never let him know.

"Harry got a new broomstick," Oliver said, wiping the sweat off his face with the bottom of his shirt. He didn't seem to notice Sawyer openly staring, the excitement in his tone vibrant as the aqua-blue sky, dazed as the morning sun beaming down on them. "A fucking Firebolt. A Firebolt—" he sounded mildly delirious as he pinned her with a deranged grin— "you know the fucking velocity—"

"Oh, we are breaking out the science words," Sawyer mused, lowering herself onto the grass, but Oliver didn't seem to hear as he automatically did the same.

"Do you know how many matches we're going to win with this?"

"All of them."

"All of them," Oliver said, pinning her with a serious look, as if Sawyer hadn't said anything at all. A thunderous look crossed his expression, cutting his smile into two. "And the worst thing is McGonagall thinks it must be cursed or something, so she took it off Harry's hands and now all the professors are trying to test it to see if it's been tampered with but it's a Firebolt! You'd think she'd be a little more enthusiastic about this since she's also been so tilted by our losses. I mean the team's been doing substantially well since I've made them each a comprehensive list of things to work on, and I've done all the calculations. If we win at least two of the matches, we'd secure the Quidditch Cup. But, no, everyone thinks the Firebolt's going to throw Harry into the Whomping Willow or club him to death in his sleep. I mean, yeah, valid concern, because we do still need a Seeker to win enough points to get well ahead, but still— it's a Firebolt!"

For a long, painful moment of deliberation, Sawyer wanted to tell him that he should probably reflect on the fact that he was willing to put Harry's life on the line for a Cup that wouldn't mean anything after graduation, but she saw his point. In a Quidditch match, it was possible to still secure a win even without catching the Golden Snitch if the Chasers could accumulate enough points to make the point gap impossible for the other team to close.

"I suppose it all comes down to your Chasers," Sawyer said, winding her fingers in the grass. "If Harry ends up dead because of the Firebolt, maybe you should grill your Chasers more so they can easily make the snitch redundant."

Oliver hummed. "Valid. But Angelina will probably cut off my head if I send her one more work out list—"

"Your methods are so tone-deaf." Sawyer nudged his knee with her foot.

"Like yours are any more ethical, Miss If-You-Touch-My-Things-I'll-Break-Your-Neck," Oliver scoffed, but there was no scorn in it.

Flicking a handful of grass in his direction, Sawyer sent Oliver a cat-like grin as they fell over him like green confetti. "Anything for you, lover."

Oliver rolled his eyes.

Wordlessly, Sawyer reached into the side pocket of her duffel bag and fished out a set of keys and a mixtape she'd made over the Christmas break, but held onto because she wanted to wait for the right time. Oliver lifted a brow. She held both items out to him with both hands, but he didn't move. Just stared at her, like he was seeing her with brand new eyes. Growing impatient, Sawyer pressed them to his chest until he took them, his fingers curling against hers even as she pulled her hands away.

"What's this?" Oliver asked, confusion etched over his face. It was slightly endearing.

Waving a flippant hand at him, Sawyer leant back, knocking her shoes against his. "The birthday boy deserves a present." At his dumbfounded look, Sawyer tore her gaze away, suddenly unable to look at him, the overwhelming urge to disappear under the intensity of his gaze, stripping off the layers of granite on her skin, crawling like gooseflesh over her arms. "January 6th. You never celebrate. I mean, Wyatt and I never do anything for our birthday, because I think birthday parties are stupid and pointless, but... It's nice to... have things. The keys are yours forever. You can use them any time for the rest of the semester. Your team doesn't have to book the pitch and wait for an available slot now you can clock in late evening practices. And the mixtape—"

Oliver caught the rest of her words with the press of his lips against hers. It caught her by surprise, and she froze up for a second, and when Oliver began to pull away, she wound her fingers in his shirt and anchored him in place, her eyes sliding shut as she sank into his body heat.

When they parted, Oliver leant his forehead against hers, panting slightly, like he'd had the breath knocked from his lungs. Sawyer felt it, too. Each kiss always felt new.

"You are the best thing that's ever happened to me," Oliver muttered, her face still cradled in one hand, and because these words, too, were so new, Sawyer felt the inferno within burning her up inside immolate every single pocket of emptiness inside. Felt the flames suck out every inch of oxygen in her body and all of a sudden she didn't know what to do with all of these feelings, a tide so strong she could've mistaken it for the overwhelming urge to kill him. All her life she'd kept clinging to the belief that everything good was always somewhere else. Seventeen and always searching for the exit. But everything good was already here.

Sawyer shook her head. "Stop it."

Brushing his thumb over her cheek, a corner of his lips tugged into a soft smile.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
6

OKAY SO AS WE INCH CLOSER TO THE END IM REALLY STARTING TO THINK I NEED SOME ALCOHOL AND A CRYING SESSION ON FACETIME WITH MY #1 CHEERLEADER bIoodbender WHEN I FINALLY POST THE LAST CHAPTER BC I AM WAYYYYY TOO ATTACHED

*Jude Liu is my oc from my upcoming daphne greengrass fic!!!! she's going to be so angry and so violent because of Blinding Envy and so apathetic to everything that doesn't concern her we love a hot-tempered, coldblooded mafia bitch.

yes i class all my OCs by the 7 deadly sins