Please, could you be tender?
And I will sit close to you
Let's give it a minute before we
admit that we're through

✷

After, 1999

It takes only a second for a heart to break. A deadly deluge of adrenaline and noradrenaline flooding the heart and pulverising pathways and musculature, a breaking of strings and stitches of tissue coming undone. It's temporary, takes only a couple weeks or even a few days for the heart to remember its function, to remember itself as the organ that the body can't live without, doesn't seem to leave any lasting heart damage, no scar tissue to commiserate the psychological distress, and yet.

And yet, Sawyer doesn't think she will ever recover.

Her heart hasn't remembered itself since it walked out the door.

It takes only a second for the breakage, the moment of the ripping and the wreckage left in its wake, her chest cracked open upon the kitchen island between the blue ceramic bread bin that was their first housewarming gift, and the bags of groceries. What hurts most is the domesticity of it all, the fallout she'd seen coming for months now, but never had the guts to put into words. He'd managed to do it just fine, though. Really, she shouldn't be surprised. He's always been the one who's better with words, and she's always left staring at the empty space he's carved out, forced to replay the moment he walked out the door with everything they'd built, waiting for the entire building to come crumbling on top of her.

After the fact, Sawyer knows there's no cure for it, no quick fix for a broken heart but time. And aspirin for the ache.

After the fact, there is just this. The thunderous ticking of the wall clock, a canned echo pounding against the weeping wound, with no safety net to catch her in the free fall, and the pieces of the people they used to be scattered like leaves across the one-bedroom flat that felt much too empty now without a second warm body, and the ghost of his lips pressed against her forehead.

There is just this, a supercut of Befores and Afters left behind for Sawyer to sort into boxes and leave out on the doorstep for collection.

—

I. Graduation, 1994

It's easier to say no to things before she's denied first.

Which is to say that Sawyer has always put herself in a position where she's able to make her own choices. It'd served her well throughout the years at Hogwarts with nothing academic to excel at, and growing up in a chemical home and a twin whom she'd treated like a ghost rather than a mirror.

There was Quidditch, but that was a whole other can of worms, which had been blown wide open by the force that was Oliver Wood. Oliver—the relentless chisel that chipped away at the fortress that built Sawyer Lee to get to the soft animal within.

Then came the letter from the NQL, the draft that'd cemented her place in this world before she could float away into obscurity. Second Beater, right out of graduation. Oliver had kissed her senseless for hours after she'd pulled the paper from her pocket and shoved it into his chest for confirmation. It wouldn't be the first time she'd foregone her track record of exercising her right to refusal if only to watch the faces crumple, but it would be the first time she went ahead and did something for herself, taking these running strides into a brighter future.

It's all Oliver's fault, honestly, he'd gone and torn up her safe script. Now, here she was going Pro when just last year she could only see herself in a shallow marked grave, and the year before that, nothing at all.

So, graduation. At the close of May, the summer was just beginning to set into the earth's bones, and Sawyer hadn't once thought about dying, even in the fructifying heat. There wasn't much to it, really, just a simple, standard ceremony in the Great Hall and itchy skin as she sat in the middle of her cohort with everyone whose surname began with L, her brother on her right, and one of his stupid friends on her left. Sawyer had shut her eyes the moment she'd taken her seat, dozing off throughout Dumbledore's opening speech, congratulating them, again, on hard work and resilience through trying times and holding out for better things. Wyatt hadn't been able to sit still, and he'd kept casting furtive glances over his shoulder, searching for his other friends as the 'A' row slowly shuttled through the stage to claim their diplomas and finish off their years at Hogwarts with one last flourish.

In the back of the hall, as the names echoed across the room in Dumbledore's thunderous, magic-amplified voice, embarrassingly loud cheers erupted from the family-designated seats. She wondered if her parents were going to shout like that when it came to her. Personally, Sawyer would rather die, but she was also learning to let go of language that connoted suicidal ideation. So—correction—graduation. She just wanted to get to the afterparty in the Slytherin Common Room and pour shots of gin down Jeremy and Quinn's throats.

Wyatt tapped her shoulder.

Sawyer's eyes snapped open.

"What."

"Something terrible is happening," Wyatt said, gravely, blinking down at Sawyer as she slanted him an impassive look, arms crossed firmly over her chest. He looked ridiculous in the cap and gown, the red tassel dangling like a carrot in front of his face. "I think Dad made a sign. It is bright orange."

Horror flashed through her. Together, they turned slowly, craning their necks to seek out their parents amid the flock of families that'd arrived earlier this morning to witness the ceremony. Sure enough, there he was, their clown of a father, holding onto a bright orange sign with their names emblazoned in red and yellow glitter across it. Shellshocked and plagued with lukewarm dread, they turned back to the front and sank down low in their seats.

"I'm killing myself," deadpanned Sawyer. "Want to join?"

"What are the logistics of dying in front of everyone," Wyatt concurred, a crease in his brow, "on stage?"

"I know there's rat poison somewhere in this castle."

"Wouldn't be a high enough dosage to kill us." Wyatt deliberated this for a moment. "Maybe a double suicide? Avada Kedavra innit?"

"Wyatt Lee," Sawyer mused, pleasantly surprised by her brother for the second time in her life, "are you—Mum and Dad's golden child—actually proposing we use the Unforgivable Killing Curse?"

"Sawyer Lee," Wyatt volleyed back, mirth tugging at the corners of his mouth, "yes, I am."

Sawyer hummed. "I've taught you well."

"You haven't taught me shit."

"Of course I have. I'm older than you."

"By three minutes!"

"I'm afraid to get in the middle of this," said Ashton, his voice a bewildered drawl at Sawyer's left shoulder. "Also, isn't that your friend up there?"

Sawyer's gaze snapped back to the stage where Rio, in his ill-fitted gown and haphazardly loosened green tie, was currently accepting his scroll, testament to the sheer willpower of a boy who would tear his way through heaven and hell to get what he wanted. And through the polite shower of applause, there was Jeremy and Quinn and Marcus hollering their support somewhere in the crowd, their voices easily discernible to Sawyer's ears. She didn't have to look to know that not one of those seats in the back was occupied by his family. Even his brother, Callum, hadn't bothered to show. But fuck them, because they'd written him off. She was his family, had been since day one. All four of them were, and they were proud of him, because he'd shredded through the poison in his veins, fought with every ounce of his being against the addiction that'd nearly killed him. Disgraced from his family and shackled to St Mungos for six months, Rio had clawed his way back home to them, bit by bit, the colour returning to his cheeks, and he'd finished his exams and passed with flying colours. He was, after all, much more intelligent than they gave him credit for.

Rio turned to the crowd, buzzed head and rottweiler grin, canines flashing as his gaze met Sawyer's across the room. He threw her a wink, and she tossed him a mock salute.

After that, things went by fairly quickly.

Quinn went next, ascending the ramp to the chorus of Jeremy's cheering and Sawyer's unabashed whistle, and though her complexion was too dark for a true blush to show, the way she ducked her head behind her corkscrew curls was telling enough. Just a few days ago, their scores had come out, the top ten of their cohort announced. Quinn's name had been one of the first on the list. Surpassed only by Jeremy.

One of Wyatt and Oliver's friends—Dylan—followed in succession, and their entire group—scattered across the graduates' seats—leapt up with such vigour Sawyer nearly toppled over in her seat as Ashton and Wyatt heaved themselves to their feet on either side of her. Sawyer twisted round and found Oliver stood further back with the W row, pure, unadulterated pride plastered across his face, the scorching sun breaking through the clouds of his usual stone-faced and unimpressed countenance. She found herself unable to tear her gaze away.

When Marcus swaggered onstage, there was the combined roar of the Slytherins, his own core family, and the family he'd chosen over blood. He'd taken the show of support with tight-lipped and cool grace. After him, Jeremy's walk-up was an explosion of pure, unadulterated noise that spoke to how well-loved he'd become among his peers, but it did nothing to drown out the gaping silence in the empty chairs his parents were meant to fill before something called them away for the day. Sawyer couldn't stand the way the light in his eyes dimmed just a fraction when he found the empty chairs, and so she'd dragged Wyatt up by the scruff of his collar and clapped for Jeremy.

Then it was their turn.

"We made it," said Wyatt, hardly believing the conviction in his own voice.

"We're free," Sawyer echoed, her own passing scores flashing to the forefront of her mind, along with the draft letter signed by the Appleby Arrows' talent acquisition team.

Sawyer glanced over her shoulder, and found Oliver without even trying, their gazes snapping together like magnets. He threw her a wave, and she answered back with a rare smile. When her name was called, Sawyer saw the flash of her father's gaudy orange sign, Jeremy, Rio, Quinn and Marcus' screaming faces, and Oliver, stood on his chair, hands cupped around his mouth, hollering, "that's my girl!"

It was something, she heard his voice echoing in her head. Don't say it wasn't.

—

II. London, 1995

Six months sober and counting on the night of graduation, Rio got down on one knee during the afterparty.

"Will you, Sawyer Lee," he said, devil-may-care grin and skin thicker than marble, the odd stares from the surrounding party-goers glancing off him like arrows on stone, "be my roommate?"

Blank-faced, arms crossed over her chest, Sawyer swept his ankle out from beneath him with a kick, jerking him forward into a panicked split. With a pained wheeze, Rio collapsed to the ground, clutching his hamstrings and spitting vicious curses.

"Sure," Sawyer said, standing over him with a smug smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

A bright flash went off, illuminating the dark and gloomy space of the Slytherin common room, and Sawyer glanced up from Rio's crumpled form to Quinn waving a disposable camera in her face.

"So, that's a yes?" Quinn mused, moving to bump her shoulder against Sawyer's. "I'm going to miss sharing a room with you."

"Well," Sawyer said, fishing a broken half of a sugar quill she'd forgotten about last week from the back pocket of her black jeans. She turned it over for a quick scan, and, deeming it fairly clean, popped it into her mouth. "You're going to Oxford with Jeremy, Marcus wants to live alone, and Oliver's moving in with my brother—who the hell else am I supposed to live with but this stupid cunt?"

"Who's a stupid cunt?" Oliver asked, coming over with Marcus in tow, double-fisting butterbeers and eyeing Rio, who was still lying on his back on the carpeted floor, with manifest puzzlement.

"Me," Rio groaned.

"He asked?" Arching a brow, Oliver handed Sawyer one of the paper cups, foam spilling over the rim. "You said yes?"

"Assuming we're splitting rent equally," Sawyer deadpanned. "I did."

They moved into a flat in London, on the East End, the moment Sawyer received her first paycheck.

Their two-bedroom rental was quaint, nothing too upscaled for the sake of their budget, while Rio apprenticed with a local tattoo parlour and Sawyer acclimated to her first training season with the Appleby Arrows. The windows were big, and at certain times of the day, the light melted through the glass like butter on their wooden floorboards. It'd come furnished, but Rio had decided he hated most of the furniture, and ended up blowing most of his meagre paycheck on antique furniture he'd picked up from charity shops. Within a week of moving in, they had a red faux Persian rug, a glass coffee table, three stained glass lamps and a pink salt lamp, a vanity with a mother-of-pearl frame, and more beanbags and throw pillows than required for little lounging they actually did. But after a hard day's practice filled with gruelling drills and conditioning, and after a long day of ink and scrubbing the floors of the tattoo parlour, they're grateful for the home they've built with each other.

By mercy of their university schedule, Jeremy and Quinn were a seasonal event, shaking rain from their coats and bearing baked goods and student budget wine. The first time Quinn stopped by Sawyer's room to borrow a set of pyjamas since she'd forgotten to pack hers, the scream she let out had all three of them bursting through Sawyer's bedroom door, Sawyer clutching her bat, Jeremy, his wand, and Rio, a kitchen knife.

"You have a reading nook?! The ultimate yearning spot?" Quinn gaped with complete, utter exaltation and adoration at the reading nook in Sawyer's room, at which Sawyer neither read nor yearned.

At Quinn's insistence, they bought a cushioning pad from Primark and laid it over the bench.

By their second month, Rio had somehow managed to bypass the seals and gain access to the rooftop, where they ate breakfast on weekend mornings, and watched sunsets in comfortable silence on their days off. Sometimes Rio brought his sketchbook up there, and to the sound of his pencil scratching over thick paper, Sawyer plugged her headphones in and pressed play on the new cassettes Oliver sent her. When their friends came over to visit, they piled onto the sofa and opened bottles of wine and passed around bowls of chocolate-covered fruit and popcorn and no other walls in the universe could have heard more laughter and warmth than Flat 4F3 of Mile End Road.

Four months into living together, the rhythm they'd settled into was an easy, mechanised dance. They watched the seasons pass through the window. They went to work and held semi-passable conversations with other people outside of their true circle, then came home to each other to dissect their interactions and wonder why things simply didn't click the way it did with the friends of their teenagehood. They went out to pubs on Saturday nights. Rio brought home boys, and Sawyer called Oliver to grouch about the lack of action she was getting, considering he was a six hour train ride away. They took care of each other, too.

After a particularly bad day of stencilling and screw-ups, Rio had found himself wandering around London with no particular purpose in mind except a quick fix, an artificial high. He'd caught himself in time, but the horrific crash of guilt and shame that burned in his gut nearly sent him into a tailspin. It was Sawyer who'd found him on the rooftop sitting in the rain, staring out into the hazy skyline. Despite the wet weather and the pinpricks of cold rain lashing against their skin, she draped a plaid blanket over his shoulders and sat beside him until he found the words.

("I nearly slipped." He glanced at her, shadows under his vacant grey eyes, assessing her in the way of a wounded animal, cornered and twitchy and primal. Teeth bared to mask the fear—fear of a repeat of what'd transpired between them two years ago, the shattered trust and a second second chance she wouldn't grant him again.

"But you didn't," Sawyer said, her voice an anchor holding him in place, ever-steady and unwavering in its conviction. "And you're stronger for it."

"Shitty client at work got to me," he said, scrubbing a rough hand over his shorn head, frustration grating against his tone. "If something like that nearly wrecks it all for me, what's going to happen if something worse comes along?"

"What were you thinking when you pulled yourself out of it?"

Rio let out a sharp exhale. "How you'd kill me."

A corner of Sawyer's lips ticked upward into the ghost of a smile.

"And worse," he continued, quieter now, "I didn't want to lose you for a second time.")

There were also the times when Sawyer could feel herself backsliding into the dark lethargy and the hot flash of her temper. The times when trying was never enough and getting out of bed to simply exist seemed more impossible than the prospect of getting fired. Times when she'd come home wrapped in a storm, slamming doors and staring into the mirror, white-knuckling the sink so she wouldn't shatter the glass just to feel something break.

("Well, then," Rio said, leant against the doorframe, his face scrunched up in scorn as he eyed her standing in the middle of their bathroom, though she didn't miss the flash of concern in his gaze. Despite how wound up she was, how the wayward itch beneath her skin demanded for broken bones and the thrill of a fight, Rio wasn't afraid. There were few people who could say the same. "What happened? Who're we killing?"

Sawyer let out a slow breath, the words rattling around her head like tic-tacs in a box. Lazy, lazy, lazy. "It's nothing."

"Oh, sure," he said, dryly, "if I called Oliver, would you be singing the same tune?"

She'd tried not to let it get to her. There was a time when her skin had been made of fortified steel, where she had forfeited pride as protection against people, against her mother, against every critique thrown her way. But then Gregory fucking Cotton had to shout her name across the pitch when she'd swung on a Bludger a shade late, sending the projectile careening into his path, and ream her out in front of everyone, spitting around words like lazy, wash-out, slow, and mentally retarded. And while Sawyer wasn't typically fazed by any reprimand flaming her way, it was the particular sequence of words he'd chosen that struck something deep within her, a raw nerve that unlocked every bad name, every moment of failure, everything she'd wanted to keep buried until she'd worked through the root of the problem came pouring out.

Possessed by some violent spirit, she'd planted both hands against his chest when he'd come up to her, red in the face and raging, and shoved him so hard he fell back into the sand. In another life, in a smaller body, she might have wound her fist back and pummelled him half to death, the words ringing in her head in her mother's voice, but she shoved the thought of pulverising him and turned to leave, her anger a knife pinwheeling within, slashing up her insides, directed at no one else but herself.

She told Rio all this, in no more than two sentences, leaving out the part about where she'd kept the rage. She was certain he could tell, regardless.

"What a cunt," Rio remarked. He cocked his head. "Come, let's go get some ice cream and Irish coffee, and I'll draw his stupid face, and we can set it on fire."

To her surprise, she found herself not quite wanting to do that, the fire put out by the frankness in Rio's tone.

"I think," Sawyer said, "I have to go back to therapy.")

Even in the liberating independence of adulthood, they kept a tight leash on each other, which is to say that they looked out for each other with the same unyielding ferocity as their Hogwarts days. Rio had memorised Sawyer's medication schedule, and she dragged him out of bed to his addiction support group sessions. There was something so steadfast and secure in this companionship that, even though they had a difficult time motivating the other to do their fair share of the chores (Sawyer with the hoovering, and Rio with the dishes), the animosity dissipated within seconds, no apologies required.

All things considered, Rio was not a terrible flatmate.

In some ways, he was the ship cruising along the brackish, churning waters, searching for her among the dark waves to guide her home.

—

III. Quidditch Season, 1996

"Just to be clear, I'm not giving you insider intel on PU," Oliver said, "but I think there's a way to hack the game. It's psychological."

He'd been plucked from the reserve team at the start of this season, shuffled to the main line-up.

"Nerd," Sawyer mused, the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear as she spooned a chilli oil dumpling into her mouth. "There goes my offer to trade team secrets for favours."

"That's technically prostitution, babe." Oliver fell silent, contemplating. "But I wouldn't take that off the table just yet."

"Carry on, then."

"All these seasoned players," Oliver said, "they take their plays out of the same playbook. There's been new stuff invented within the last year, but they're not going to run it during a real match. It's too much risk. It's a worst-case scenario type situation, if the push-back is too fierce, they'll be looking for a miracle, even if there's no guarantee anyone picks up on their game."

"So we should play it first?"

"All I'm saying is that it's interesting." She could picture his self-satisfied grin, how clever he must've thought himself, how it felt like a bolt clicking into place whenever she picked up on the essence of his revelation before he even put it down. "Nobody knows what to expect from an amateur, actually. They've got all that experience, and all we've got is guts."

Professional Quidditch is a completely different ballpark. It is angles and equations, formulas and split-second calculations. It is aggressive and cutthroat, a hunt rather than a high-stakes competition. Every player on the team is hungry in the way of predation, and while Sawyer had coasted on raw talent while she was on the Hufflepuff team, it was not nearly enough to sustain her place on the pitch.

Among her teammates, her colleagues, there was plenty of talent to go around. She wasn't anything special just because she could hit a flying projectile hard enough to almost knock someone off their broom. This was the real thing.

They didn't play against each other immediately. First, there were the months of training, team bonding exercises which Sawyer had begrudgingly tolerated, and the late night phone calls where they would lay their days upon the line and slice through the flesh of the moment in an open vivisection, take all of the dark organs out and inspect the meat. Something real to hold onto while they were kilometres apart. They counted down the days to the weekend, dreading Monday mornings and humming with palpable excitement on Friday evenings.

Sawyer's teammates were fine. Not too different from the dynamics of her former Hufflepuff team, in the sense that they couldn't quite get through to her outside of the topic of Quidditch, which she rarely brought up. She learnt their names, their roles, just enough about them that jogged her memory and nothing more. She got the feeling that none of them liked her much, considering the locker room fell quiet whenever she walked in to change out, and the way their gazes passed over her as though she weren't there. As though she was merely warming the bench. Only a couple had smiled at her on her first day, but when they realised she wasn't much for small talk or any talk at all, really, the effort had died down, and they fell in line with the rest, ignoring her where they could. Most of them only spoke to her if only to shout at her mistakes on the pitch. It didn't bother her much, really. It was just work. They were colleagues. She just wanted to play.

Coach Gaumont was the exception.

("You know why I picked you, Lee?" Coach asked, peering at her with flinty eyes, assessing her reaction. "Out of all the talent in Hogwarts. Guess."

That day after she'd shoved Gregory Cotton, star Seeker of the Appleby Arrows, Sawyer was half-certain she was getting fired when Coach requested to see her in his office, that cramped shoe-box of a space in the stadium. They sat with the desk between them, but it made no difference in the gulf of distance that Sawyer ripped into the space-time continuum to keep another out. Resistance wasn't a language that she could so easily unlearn, a mechanism she returned to over and over. Heightened now, when she had something to lose.

For an endless moment, Sawyer weighed his question in her hands, palms up. In the garish lighting of the office, the red skin of her blistering fingers burned. She slumped in the chair, shaking her knees, lounging with dispassion. Coach scowled at her as she considered him, the salt and pepper threaded through his short-cropped hair and three-day-old beard, the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, the craters of old acne scars and a crooked, aquiline nose from taking a Bludger one too many times to the face. He was once a Beater, back in the glory days, testament to the mountainous span of his shoulders, the boulders for biceps, the creaking elbows and the hulking figure he cut against the white walls of his too-small office. In actuality, the office was fine, standard—Coach was just an unapologetically big guy.

"Because of my stunning personality?" Sawyer drawled, lips tugging into a vacant grin.

"I pulled your school records, wrote to a few of your professors." Coach steepled his fingers over the table. "Your grade point average was terrible. You had an attitude problem. Your professors had nothing good to say about you. Madam Hooch wanted to pull you off the team. But something kept you on it. Why?"

Sawyer shrugged. "Didn't have a choice."

"Or," Coach said, emphatically, "you knew you had something to lose. Deep down, you wanted it. You wanted to play, and you wanted to be good. That's why I picked you, Lee. You're a little green against these guys, but unlike them, you're still hungry. All the good amateurs are. You want to learn. You want to be better. That's someone worth my while. Someone I know I can trust to work with."

Those words were a faint echo in her memory. Something she'd said once, in less eloquent terms, to Violet at the beginning of fifth year. Sawyer's gaze flicked up to meet Coach's dark-eyed stare. She nodded, because she did. She wanted this so badly like she's never wanted anything else.

"What happened today can't ever happen again," said Coach, his tone grave, firm. "Greg was a complete cunt, so I'll let this one slide without disciplinary action, but you will not assault any of your teammates. I don't need you to be best friends with everyone, but I expect a modicum of professionalism from you. Am I clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good." He levelled her with a meaningful stare. "Now, go home and rest. I have to deal with Greg.")

What she preferred was the grit of the bat in her hands, the sweat coating the nape of her neck, the sun beating down on them, hot sand under her palms as they ran conditioning and drills. Doing, rather than talking.

The second phase of her training, post-probationary period, begot a little more resistance. They'd assigned her a personal trainer and a nutritionist to iron out certain errant lifestyle choices. Namely, the exorbitant volumes of ice cream and the complete disregard for anything of nutritional value in her diet.

("—all I'm saying is that there's no reason why that pass is so hard to grasp, it's literally just physics," Oliver grumbled.

"Maybe you should chuck a textbook at his head," Sawyer drawled, picking at her nails, the skin of her forehead prickling with irritation. "It's not like you can do anything. You're the Keeper, not the Captain. That's not your problem."

A pause.

Immediately, guilt flooded Sawyer's gut. He didn't deserve this. He didn't. Knocking her head back against the wall, she shut her eyes and heaved a laborious sigh, the ache a sharp reminder of her body. "Sorry. I'm just—"

Oliver laughed. "They got you with the nutritionist, didn't they?"

"Just euthanise me already," Sawyer grunted, miserably. "Don't you dare laugh—I have to eat vegetables everyday now. It's disgusting and psychotic. I want to quit."

"That's why you've been so grouchy lately."

"I hate you."

Clearly amused, Oliver hummed. "Sure you do, grouch.")

Slowly, day by day, practice after practice, somewhere between the burn of precision drills and the sharp reverb of her bat colliding with the Bludger singing in her bones, Sawyer felt her body changing. Gone was all the puppy fat of bad living, all of it sloughed off through pounding the bleachers, racking weights and strength conditioning. Gone was the lethargy, the dark matter gathered between layers of muscle, tethering her to the ground.

Now, she twisted and torched through the air, her body tight and iron-fast, taking corners sharper, the bat in her hands much lighter and surer than ever. Those long, sweltering days in the Appleby Arrows' indoor stadium where the ferocious calamity of scrimmages, body-checking and bruising, running down the clock with everything she's got, humidity building and building as the Chasers packed close, as the opponents crowded her in, as the world exploded into flashes of colour and blurred streaks in periphery, the pressure chamber turning her into something hard and shiny and invincible.

Somewhere along the way, surviving became enduring became playing.

At first it wasn't noticeable, until she'd come home from practice one day, tossing her sweat-soaked shirt into the washing machine, left in her white Nike sports bra and rolled-up shorts. Rio had been sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for the water in his pot to boil, but the moment his gaze landed on her, his mouth popped open in a comical caricature of shock.

"Since when did you have a six-pack?" Rio gawked, disbelief blasted across his angular face as he took in her strikingly toned stomach, and the new definition of her arms.

He, too, had changed. Where the pale stretch of his arms were once filled with scars and track marks, ink-black vines clambered up the scaffolding of his elbow, dark lines converged on the point of his wrist, a school of fine-lined fish floated up the stream of his arm and disappeared up the sleeve of his t-shirt. Upon his knuckles, where once the skin was perpetually bloodied and split, were roman numerals in deep blue. A date, perhaps.

It was Tyler Havilliard, one of the Keepers on the lineup, who complimented her on her improvement after a rough scrimmage among the team. It was a risky move, but after observing from the sidelines for a couple weeks, she had a rough idea of what her teammates expected from her. Which was precisely why she had to leverage her amateur hour. When the Quaffle had pinged between the goals enough times for her to generate a pattern in the game, she picked the moment to hound the right Chasers.

With the Quaffle in opposition possession, the score stuck in a stubborn stalemate, Sawyer knocked her bat against her palm for luck. Three Chasers in an arrowhead formation shot across the pitch. The leader spearheading the group clutched the Quaffle like a lifeline. He wove through the bombardment of Chasers body-checking him into submission, teeth gritted and fighting back with a vengeance. Further down the pitch, Charlotte, one of the first Beaters, shouted her name.

Sawyer heard the deafening crack of a bat colliding with a Bludger first.

Across the pitch, the Chasers had congregated into a mass of colours, the altercation driving their flight lower and lower, losing altitude and level with the goals. Sawyer didn't need to think. With the glaring stadium lights in her favour, any projectile that came flying at them at a slightly raised angle wouldn't be easily evaded. They'd pitch into upward flight to escape a Bludger coming at an illusively flat angle. It wouldn't be enough.

When the Bludger closed in, Sawyer ducked lower and struck with all her might. The terrible impact carried through her bat, a powerful reverb shocking up the bones of her arms and right through to her chest. Packed like an uppercut, the Bludger rocketed towards the seething mass of Chasers clamouring for the Quaffle. Someone shouted a warning. Alarmed, the Chasers scrambled to dive clear as the Bludger locked in on the target. But it was too late.

She hadn't been aiming for the Quaffle.

It struck one of the Chasers on the opposition first, splintering the front end of his broomstick from an upward angle.

The motion hadn't stopped there. The force of it sent him reeling into the next Chaser, who spun into another, and another.

Like bowling pins, they crashed into each other, unable to stop the momentum, unsure how to avoid the chaos of a multi-part collision at such an awkward angle.

The Quaffle popped free, and one of the Chasers who hadn't been preoccupied with disentangling themselves from the crash had snatched it mid-fall, driving the win home.

"Let's fucking go, Sawyer Lee!" Charlotte hollered, her powerful voice booming across the pitch. "That's my rookie!"

When the score finally broke even, the timer rang. Grounded at Coach's command, Sawyer shook her hands out and trudged over to the team huddle he'd signalled for.

A warm hand clapped over her shoulder. Sawyer turned to meet Tyler Havilliard's roguish grin.

Tyler was only a couple years older, seasoned in the way of his familiarity with the rest of their teammates' faults and favours and the sheer gauntlet of Professional Quidditch, but not yet old enough to acknowledge a good play. He told her as much, with a brief, nice play, Lee, and a pat on the back.

"That was so fucking stupid and dangerous," Coach growled, glaring daggers at Sawyer, who only smirked. "Never pull something like that again without discussing it with me." He pursed his lips, blew out an exhale and rubbed his temples. Then he regarded Sawyer with a measured look. "But good work, kid."

Just like that, the ice had melted fractionally. They knew what she was worth. She had to prove it again and again.

On the Thursday before the first match of the season, Sawyer sat against the wall, tangling her fingers in the coiled wire of the landline, Oliver's voice in the shell of her ear like a warm hand cupping her face.

"We're going to kick your arse," said Oliver, mouth slanted in a devious grin.

"You'll eat your words," Sawyer answered, her tone flippant, but something inside her was shifting, an undeniable tectonic movement.

Gone was the reckless indifference, the teenage boredom swirling deep inside some unreachable place within her like sludge. Deep inside, the change had already happened. She supposed she'd been waiting for a long time to feel something, anything, that wasn't the flat, itchy TV static of her teenagehood. Waiting for someone to take the dark twists of her insides and flip it into something steeled, something that nobody could touch, make things matter in the way that nothing else can.

In the way that talking through landlines could.

—

IV. Edinburgh, 1997

"I don't know if this is a terrible idea," Oliver had said, once, when they were seventeen, trading sips from Sawyer's flask on the night they'd snuck out of prom to a Quidditch pitch smothered by the stars, "or if it's the firewhiskey talking, but once Wyatt gets sick of being my flatmate, I was just thinking that you and I could live together, y'know, if you want. If you think this—" he gestured between them— "is worth it."

Though she'd been half-liquid in the grass at that point, it wasn't the firewhiskey that warmed her to the core.

Twenty, now, and it was worth it.

The move from London to Edinburgh had been a swift and decisive manoeuvre, the obvious next step once Rio had slammed the eviction notice on the kitchen counter. Their lease hadn't been renewed, and their flakey landlord had sold the apartment to some faceless bidder. Though Sawyer would come to miss the room with the reading nook and the thousand decorative lamps they'd amassed in the living room and the fireplace no one used, she would be remiss if she didn't admit that it gave her the excuse to badger Oliver into letting her move into his place.

She hadn't even managed to get the words out before Oliver had asked. Another puzzle piece falling into place.

("What's this I hear about Rio moving into Marcus' flat?" Oliver mused, lifting a brow.

They were hanging around Oliver's kitchen on Saturday evening, while he did the dishes, prolonging their home-cooked dinner date night with dessert and clean-up.

"Oh," Sawyer grumbled, shovelling ice cream into her mouth—the one cheat day she was so graciously granted by Stella, the nutritionist—with a starved savagery. "That. We're being evicted."

Oliver shut off the faucet and fixed her with a flat look. "And you didn't tell me this because...?"

"I'm telling you now, no?"

"Look, grouch," Oliver said, and she didn't like the look of that smirk ghosting his lips, "if you want to move in with me, just say it."

Eyes narrowed, Sawyer stabbed her spoon into the tub, the silence stretching between them as she stared him down, his gaze unbreaking. "I want the studio apartment on Quartermile."

"Sure, sure," Oliver said, unable to mask his triumphant grin. He nodded his chin at the tub of ice cream in her hands. "Give me a bite of that. And you're going to tell me what's going on with Rio and Marcus, because I do need some dirt on that guy.")

Marcus and Rio had been cagey about each other for a year.

Since the graduation party, since every party after that. Rio said he'd be crashing on Marcus' sofa for the time being, until he found a new flat, but Sawyer had already made the bet with Jeremy and Quinn that they'd be back together by Christmas, that there would be no flat hunt, and there would be no "crashing on the couch". All three of them had known, even before the two boys, that the whole "we're trying to be friends" deal wasn't going to last very long.

After deliberating the logistics—the commute to work that was pretty much negligible, considering they could travel via broomstick or Floo powder—they moved in together within the week, from the grey of London to the partial wilderness of Edinburgh.

The Quartermile apartment was everything Sawyer hadn't realised she'd wanted. It was clean lines and hardwood floors, a state-of-the-art kitchen and big windows, a little on the expensive side, but their combined salaries—and Oliver's offer to cover most of the expenses, because, really, he just wanted her to be happy—made it more manageable. Besides, there was a Sainsbury's on the ground floor.

It felt like a dream, seeing all the boxes, all their possessions, in one place. They bought vintage posters from a yard sale on one of the University of Edinburgh campuses, camouflaged as students, dragged around by Wyatt, who'd moved into student accommodation to close out his Physiotherapy undergrad.

Between practices and the exhaustion that came with the nature of their work, unpacking had been a stalled process, their productivity gummed up with purpose. On the weekends, they slept in, waking every once in a while to the warm cocoon of tangled limbs and sheets. The best part was the coming home to each other, after a difficult day on the pitch or pulling a manoeuvre during a scrimmage they were itching to report to the other. After two years of long distance, savouring the weekends and the heart-wrenching feeling of constantly missing each other, coming home to Oliver standing in the kitchen stirring a pot of hot chocolate or Sawyer star-fished in the bed in his shirts was pure relief.

"We have to tackle these boxes," Oliver said, while they were lying in the afterglow of hot skin, Sawyer's hair splayed out on his firm chest, fingers tracing the shape of her shoulder blades. "It's getting a bit ridiculous."

Still half blissed-out, Sawyer slapped a hand lightly over his mouth, and grumbled something about staying like this for five more minutes. To which the wicked gleam in Oliver's eye should've been the first warning when he flipped her over, drawing a startled curse from her, which he smothered with a bruising kiss, and five minutes turned into ten, which turned into twenty, which turned into midday sunlight streaming into the room with Oliver pressing his mouth against the freckle on her rib that he seemed to adore.

They didn't tackle those boxes, but Oliver had hoisted Sawyer upon his shoulders and let her paint glow-in-the-dark stars on their bedroom ceiling, moving at her directive. At night, the light cast a luminant blue glow that cast his brown skin in rapturous starlight, pooling in galaxies in the dark of her eyes.

"We can't have people over until we fully unpack," Oliver said, standing in the bathroom, brushing his teeth while Sawyer lathered shampoo into her hair.

"Or," Sawyer said, poking her head out from behind the fogged-up glass, "we bring them over for a flat-warming dinner and make them unpack for us."

"That's barbaric," Oliver scoffed. Through the mirror, he levelled her with a thoughtful stare, toothbrush stuck between his teeth. "But at this point, I'll consider anything."

That year, the week after Quidditch season came to a close and the Quidditch players were officially declared free for off-season rest, Marcus threw a party. There was alcohol, and pizza delivery. There were also only the six of them filling one room, the lifeblood of their friendship pulsing through the walls, packing the space like a real rager. There was Quinn's voluminous hair spilling onto Sawyer's shoulders, a pleasant tickle against her cheek, as they lay on the couch and took turns sipping from the same glass of red wine, snickering behind their hands. There was Rio and Jeremy performing an awfully off-key rendition of Voulez-Vous, half-drunk on firewhiskey and making absolute fools of themselves. There was the corner of judgement, which housed Oliver and Marcus, arms crossed over their chests, discussing playbooks and the latest model of broomsticks. And there was the pink Himalayan salt lamp emitting its roseate glow from the TV console, basking them in its dreamlike romance.

("I can't believe we're here," Quinn said, quietly. Here could've been any number of contexts. Here, as in, alive, was Sawyer's first thought. Here, as in, carolling to ABBA in Marcus' apartment in London on the cusp of their twenties, having known each other for five years now. Here, as in, heading in six different directions in life, and yet, still pulled together by some unknown and unknowable magnetic force, the gravity they generated in their six-body orbit something inescapable despite the velocity at which they were hurtling toward the future.

"I didn't think it'd happen," Sawyer answered, truthfully. "I'm never saying this again, but I'm glad you took that lighter off my hands."

Quinn smiled, her brown eyes glimmering with the memory. "I'm glad you burned that letter from my parents. And I'm still sad we don't see each other everyday anymore."

"This is what adulthood is, Comet," Sawyer said, taking a long swig from her wine glass. "You're always missing someone one way or another."

"It sucks that we can't ever go back to how easy it was back then. Do you ever think about that? Do you ever wish we could go back?"

Sawyer shrugged. In retrospect, those years at Hogwarts hadn't been all terrible, but she liked where she was now. And though she hated the constant struggle to puzzle out a time and place where all five or six of their schedules aligned so they could meet face-to-face, which came up to a grand total of seven times a year, she wouldn't trade it for all the nostalgia in the world.

"Getting too sentimental over here, Q," came Marcus' crude voice as he vaulted over the back of his sofa and landed heavily in the space next to Quinn, throwing an arm around her shoulders. Oliver settled in next to Sawyer, and in the pink light, the harsh cut of his jaw seemed to soften, and she felt the sudden urge to kiss the silver scar on his chin.

Quinn made a sound of indignation, slanting Marcus an accusing glower. "You're telling me you don't miss all this? You don't miss spending time together like we used to?"

"We're men, Comet," he said, though the humour was there, an undercurrent eddying beneath the dryness of his tone. "We don't really reminisce about anything."

Sawyer and Oliver exchanged knowing looks.

"Objection," Jeremy cut in, coming to sit on the floor to chew on a piece of pizza crust from the box on the coffee table. His grin was sun-bright, teasing. "Just last week you got pissy with me because Quinn and I had finals and we couldn't get brunch."

"Ha!" Quinn crowed, jabbing a finger into Marcus' chest. "'We're men' my arse. You miss us. Admit it."

Begrudgingly, Marcus rolled his eyes. "Maybe a little."

"I don't know what you're all on about," Rio said, "I miss the days where we didn't have to fucking pay rent."

"Funny you say that, Alvarez," Oliver mused, his tone deceptively nonchalant. "Because I know for a fact that Marcus isn't charging you anything."

"If you're withholding secrets again," Sawyer added, her smirk mirroring Oliver's, loyal lieutenant backing the bad Captain, "it's in the best interest of this friendship to reveal them tonight."

Rio pointed the butter knife left on the table at her, eyes like omens. "Don't make me bring up that pregnancy scare of yours."

Without hesitation, Sawyer chucked a pillow at his head, and the room exploded into a frenzy of flying accusations and senseless arguing.)

By two in the morning, the alcohol had rendered them too leaden to move, a warm sleepiness tugging at their eyelids. Quinn and Jeremy left first, sweeping Sawyer into a hug so fierce they had her swearing to come down to Oxford to visit for their graduation in the summer.

"C'mon, grouch," Oliver said, his voice brutally affectionate as he tugged her to her feet, right before her eyes could close. "Let's go home."

They do so by Floo.

How easy it was, Sawyer thought, to see each other, connected by their network of fireplaces, yet, so impossible, divided by their duties of the day.

When they got home, Oliver took Sawyer up to the rooftop, where they gazed over the glittering city, the streetlamps winking like satellites in the distance. A group of uni students were cutting through the Meadows, their laughter and song whisked up by the wind, carrying over to the rooftop where Sawyer and Oliver leant over the railing, shoulders pressed together.

"What," Oliver said, tentatively, "does love mean to you?"

She glanced sideways at him, stunned by the question, its sobering depth. And found him staring back at her, green eyes hot-lighting her, flickering over her face, scavenging for every iota of her reaction, gathering data.

"It's about complete acceptance," she told him, honestly. "It's about who's there for you when everything falls apart."

"How do you know you love someone?"

"I wouldn't kill them."

Oliver pinned her with a flat look. "Funny. But, seriously."

"I suppose... I know I love someone if I'm certain I'd do anything for them."

"That's..." Oliver nodded, processing her words. "That's big. Have you ever loved anyone like that?"

She flicked him a pointedly dispassionate look, but otherwise didn't indulge him with an answer. That, in itself, might've been enough of an answer in another time. Five years now, and there hadn't been the need to say it. They both knew. What was the point? But right now... something inside Oliver seemed to snag on her reluctance. He needed to hear it, an itch deep inside that he couldn't scratch. A weight settled over his shoulders.

"Your turn," Sawyer said, her voice catching in her throat. "What's love mean to you?"

Oliver sucked in an inhale, his mind reeling as he searched for a whole answer. It came out in a steady stream of breath. "Someone who supports me. Someone who isn't afraid to critique me. Someone I'd jump into the burning building for."

"How do you know you love someone?"

"I think... I think I just know. Like, I feel it." He stared at his palms. "I don't know how to describe it, really."

Surprise flitted across Sawyer's chest. Oliver seemed all parts rational, every manoeuvre calculated with surgical precision, running through all possible outcomes in his head before acting. In all the years she'd known him, he'd never been the impulsive one, never been one given to emotion. Though, she supposed there was a reason why he belonged in Gryffindor. At his core, he was guided by the compass of his heart. If Quidditch was the polar star guiding him to obsessive perfection, Oliver was all heart.

"I think I knew," Oliver said, suddenly, breaking the silence. "When I got that detention. I had a feeling, but I just didn't really know what to make of it."

"What—" she arched her brow— "when McGonagall had you scraping gum and boogers off desks? So romantic."

Oliver grinned. He fixed her with a weighted look. "No, before that."

It took her a moment to recall, but Oliver wasn't really the sort of person who lived in detention, the way Sawyer used to be, and so, there could only be one other occasion.

"Fifth year," she said, realisation dawning upon her. She narrowed her gaze at him. "You never told me what you were doing time for."

Oliver shifted, facing her completely now. "What else could I have been doing? I was fighting for your honour."

Sawyer blinked. "No one's ever done that for me before."

"I know," Oliver said, softly, reaching up to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. "You're a horrible influence, but you make me braver."

Sawyer leant into his palm, the warmth searing against her cheek, and the words were gathered in her throat. "If we're turning this into a competition," she said, gliding her hands up his chest and around his neck to hook him closer, "I've loved you since I was six."

Oliver let out a surprised laugh. "I knew the way to your heart was sugar."

Come Christmas, Sawyer was right about Rio and Marcus, and twenty galleons richer.

—

V. the Battle of Hogwarts, 1998

Of course they swoop into battle on their broomsticks. Of course they utilise their skills, polished from years of conditioning and Quidditch manoeuvres, to drive the win home. Of course Oliver seeks Harry out before anyone else, and Sawyer finds Violet the way she can sense where her limbs are in the heat of the game.

But first, they're packed into the Great Hall, along with something called Dumbledore's Army, the staff, and more alumni Sawyer vaguely recognises. Wyatt's been called away to the infirmary with Madam Pomfrey to assist with gathering the medical supplies, playing more to his strengths as the healer, leaving all the fighting to his sister. Rio and Marcus stick close, the odd Slytherins among the kaleidoscope of more trustworthy colours, but nobody says anything, for the fact that Sawyer is standing right there with them. And in her left hand is her Beater's bat, flipping and flipping and flipping in concentric circles in her hands, generating a ravenous momentum that nearly sends her reeling back into the bloodlust of teenagehood. Something about standing in this place again, with the stone walls and its arcane magic glittering over her once more, something about regression, something about memories and moving on.

But Violet had called her.

For that very fact, Sawyer dragged everyone else back into the fold without hesitation. Oliver followed her lead without question. Quinn and Jeremy, tenured professors by then, are already there. They're shuttling the first years out of the Hall, and Sawyer had paused by the entryway to let Quinn ambush her in a hug before pulling away and returning with flustered haste to her duties.

"Oliver!" Harry exclaims, something akin to joy wiping the tension from his startlingly matured face. In the years that they'd hardly seen each other, Harry had grown from a scraggly, prepubescent twelve-year-old of awkward limbs and a smile that was more of a grimace to a young adult with a war under his wing. He also filled out his clothes now, where he was malnourished as an abandoned puppy before. When his gaze flitted over Oliver's shoulder, snapping to meet Sawyer's impassive stare, his grin doubled in size. "Sawyer!"

And when Harry rushes into their arms, they hold him for long enough that the years they shared on the Quidditch pitch back when things were much simpler begin to run like water through them. Oliver nods in approval as he gives Harry's strong-looking shoulders a squeeze.

"What's this I hear about you giving up Quidditch?" Oliver snarks, the thinly veiled accusation smothered by the barest hint of mirth.

"Smart move," Sawyer drawls, pushing Oliver out of the way. "Get out early while you can."

"Says you, Miss Professional Beater," a snide voice says from behind her, and though she's come to associate this voice with poisonous resentment, there are no traces of animosity in it now.

Sawyer doesn't have to turn around to know that her old Hufflepuff Quidditch team has gathered behind her, Nia Sparrow heading the pack, Kenai at her elbow, an incredulous Harriet and a smirking Sanchez, faces peering back at her with not contempt or caution but a fond reverence. None of them had made it professionally, considering it was rare for a Hufflepuff to be scouted, but Sawyer knows that Nia's opened a Little League pitch somewhere in Glasgow. They come bearing their broomsticks, and Violet—Violet comes tearing through the group to reach Sawyer with a vengeance.

In the years since Sawyer had last seen Violet, she's gotten much taller, much more woman-like, but her cheeks are still roseate and full, and her smile is just as bright as it was at fourteen. At eighteen, Violet is sun-bright and blazing, Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team for some two years before Quidditch had officially been cancelled for the sake of the war. Both Oliver and Sawyer had been immensely proud.

"You came!" Violet squeals, hurtling toward them like a blonde freight train, long arms snagging Oliver and Sawyer into a crushing hug. Oliver pats the distinctly more defined muscle of her biceps, and nods in approval, too, which brightens Violet's sunny expression more.

"You called," Sawyer says, as though it's that simple. Because it is. Because Violet is her girl. There is nothing she wouldn't do for her.

"They're pulling out all the underaged students," Violet informs them. "But we're here to fight."

"Your puppy's grown," remarks Rio, giving Violet a stunned once-over, as if he hadn't quite imagined her past the small age of fourteen, when she was but a fly of a girl attempting to put on a brave face among the bigger players.

"She looks like she could knock your fucking lights out," Marcus supplies, thoroughly impressed. "You look like you got a mean right hook, kid."

"Sure, she does," Sawyer cuts in, tapping her bat against Violet's arm. "I taught her."

"Alright there, Violet?" Jeremy asks, sliding into place with their group, beaming as he shakes her hand and claps a hand over her shoulder. "I hear you're thinking of going Pro, too."

"I got scouted!" Violet says, bouncing on the balls of her feet, practically vibrating with excitement. "The Falmouth Falcons reached out to me last semester!"

"That's great!" Oliver grins, unable to resist habit and patting her head with paternal pride. "You should probably hold out for a better team, though."

"I can talk to someone on the Appleby Arrows," Sawyer offered, with an indifferent shrug, igniting a hungry spark in Violet's hopeful gaze. "The Falmouth Falcons don't exactly have the best prospects in the upcoming season."

"If there's even a season at all," Oliver grunts.

Sawyer smirks, and rises up on the tips of her toes to kiss him. "Probably not, but who gives a shit about the war, right?"

Levelling her with an unimpressed look, he snakes an arm around her waist and tugs her closer. "I know you're just mocking me, but you actually read my mind. That's very creepy, love."

Violet and Harry exchange knowing grins.

"Ten galleons," Violet says, eyes flashing with a challenge, "that they're married by spring."

"I'm going to say next year," Harry muses. "Y'know, Vi, you really should reconsider your gambling habit. You're just making me richer and richer every time."

Violet rolls her eyes. She punches him in the shoulder without ceremony, sending him careening straight into the cradle of his friends' arms with an agonised oof.

Sawyer pretends to wipe a proud tear from her eye.

For the moment spun on the gilded threads of familiarity and friendship, cocooned behind these walls and the warmth of their reunion, the war at their doorstep seems half the world away.

Then Quinn comes hurrying back to them, having seen to the younger students, searching for Jeremy. Her expression is pinched with barely concealed panic, fear running through the cracks of her voice. "We need to get moving. They're almost here."

Harry is whisked away, and Violet almost follows him, but is stopped quickly by Oliver.

"We need you here," he tells her, gravely, and though she stares after Harry and his friends as they hurry off to some paramount quest for a long, conflicted moment, she nods, and takes her place next to Sawyer.

With the little time they had to spare before the Death Eaters breached the outer walls, Oliver and Marcus had gathered the Quidditch players around one of the tables and marked out their detailed strategy on a large sheet of parchment paper. Cutting-edge calculations and precise equations pour out of their collective strategic genius, filling the white space. Oliver explains formations, dives, tactical advantages and angles, and it's the first day of Quidditch practice all over again, his voice commanding the room. Marcus outlines the attack, each scaling more ambitious than the previous one. The rest of them listen raptly. They're organised into splinter groups, Beaters and Chasers divided as evenly as possible among them, armed with explosives supplied by Fred and George.

("Shame we're grounded instead of flying with you," Fred-or-George said, disgruntled, clasping Oliver's hand and tugging him in for a brief but brusque hug.

"Your fault for being so out of practice," Oliver deadpanned.

"Listen, mate, not all of us can be addicted to working out like you and the missus."

"Imagine that," the other one mused, gesturing between Sawyer, Violet, himself and his twin, "the four of us would be unstoppable.")

When the wards go down, they take flight with Oliver in the lead, wands at the ready, Sawyer's fists itching for a fight. Jeremy stays with Quinn among the grounded infantry, but Sawyer's flanked by Rio and Marcus, who's matched by Violet, her blonde braid a gilded streak behind her head.

The plan is simple.

Get the timing right.

And remember the golden rule of Quidditch: fly faster than the projectiles.

"Hawkshead formation!" Oliver shouts over the wind, all fire and guts and blazing Captain of the Quidditch team leading his red-streaked team to victory. "Marcus, take point! Sawyer, Violet, on me! Rio, back us!"

Dropping back just enough to level with Sawyer, Violet throws Sawyer a grin, a baring of teeth, as though she could take a bite from the air and come away dripping in blood. Sawyer mirrors her enthusiasm with her own savage smile. They clack their bats together as the other Quidditch players fall into an arrowhead formation, spearing into the night. Below, magic singes the air, flashes lighting up the dark, fires blazing through the corridors. From their vantage point, they strike where they can, magic fizzing like lightning from their wands. Then—

"Incoming!" Marcus hollers over his shoulder.

The Death Eaters come with their own aerial fleet, dark cloaks flapping in the wind.

A flash of green sparks explodes from Marcus' wand as it meets the volley of a vicious curse, lighting up the night sky, the foul stench of the unfinished curse swept away by the wind.

No one retaliates for a few tense seconds.

"They're confused. They think he's one of their own," Violet remarks, glancing over at Oliver. "You're a genius."

Oliver nods. "That's why we're the leading splinter group."

"Element of surprise," Sawyer says, all vacant cheer. "On your count, Captain."

A shadow comes down over Oliver's face like a visor. Battle-ready in the determined set of his sharp jaw, shoulders tensed.

(As the Quidditch players dispersed from the meeting, he'd grabbed her by the wrist, tugged her back to him before she could go for her broom. His gaze was fiercely tender, and his touch seared heat into her blood. "Whatever happens..."

"I know." He didn't have to say it. She looked at him, reached up to cup his jaw. "Tell me to go."

Oliver's eyes softened fractionally, his voice a rough whisper as he pulled her into a kiss. "Stay.")

It happens so quickly no one knows what to think.

One moment they're locked in a silent stand-off, the next, Oliver's shouting and their group breaks formation to dodge a battery of curses, verdant heat exploding in the space they once occupied. They regroup in the smoke, and the battle is violent within first contact. Marcus and Oliver surge forward, wands blasting red and green, flanked by Sawyer and Violet, swinging to kill. Magic has never been her strong suit. Sawyer knows the crush of bone better than the whisper of a spell. She fights, taking the Death Eaters by surprise as their wands fail to hold up in close combat, close enough that she slams her bat into the first skull she sees and feels the crown of bone give with a sickening crunch. They pitch into a fall, deadlocked, eliciting outraged cries from the others.

Harry hadn't wanted a death toll on their hands, but a quick expelliarmus or stupefy wasn't going to hold up against a thousand Cruciatus and Killing Curses hot against their necks. Sawyer speaks no unforgivable curse, but she's known since the beginning that she has to get her hands bloody to survive this. She doesn't think too much about the difference between herself and a Death Eater, just that they're descending upon her friends like vultures, and she's got the hunting arrows in her hands.

Adrenaline singes her veins as she pushes through the horde. Oliver intercepts a curse shot toward Marcus. Violet tackles a Death Eater on Rio's tail, destroying their broom and sending them spinning off-course. Marcus blasts a Death Eater out of the air before they can raise their wand to Sawyer. Sawyer slams her bat into the neck of a Death Eater grappling with Oliver, his choked gargle of surprise silenced by a second swing.

Rio lets out a warning shout, and Sawyer banks hard, pivoting sharply to narrowly avoid a green-flashed crucio and charge the cursor. When his face caves beneath her bat, Sawyer feels the rush thrum in her bones. Oliver barks the order for them to ground themselves, their positions too exposed on all fronts now.

By complete chance, Violet spots Harry duelling amid a swarm of cloaked and masked men. Before Sawyer can stop her, she dove into the fray, brandishing her wand and stunning two Death Eaters. Muttering under her breath, Sawyer follows Violet into hostile territory.

A flying curse splinters the bat in her hand, and she casts the broken pieces away before pulling her wand out.

"Never thought I'd see the day!" Exclaims Jeremy, materialising beside her without warning.

The first curse she throws sends two Death Eaters to the ground, their entrails spilling from their mouths, blood soaking the floor.

"That was beautiful," remarks Oliver, then he aims over Sawyer's shoulder and in a blinding flash of red heat, reduces a Death Eater to ash.

Things go south very quickly.

Sawyer watches Nia get blasted to pieces by a Death Eater and narrowly escapes the curse herself. Despite their differences, she finds herself throwing up into a bush, something heavy and foreign in her gut, later washed away by the adrenaline of throat-punching a Death Eater she'd known since first year and shattering his jaw with her fist.

Oliver watches Fred die and has to restrain Percy before he throws himself in front of another flash of green, his own heart clawed to shreds.

They find each other in the aftermath, Sawyer kneeling beside Violet, tightening the tourniquet around the gory stump of her left arm. When he lays a limp and lifeless Colin Creevey among the dead, Oliver only sees the flash of blonde hair splayed out on the floor, the closed eyelids, and his stomach bottoms out. Before he knows what he's doing, he's cut a staggering path across the Great Hall, dropped to his knees, fingers searching for a pulse, unable to hear anything besides the blinding panic tearing through him at the thought of Violet—their Violet—slipping away. It's not the weak pulse at the base of her throat that rises to meet his touch that pulls him back from the edge. It's Sawyer's voice, his name intoned on her lips.

"She's good," Sawyer says, brutally soft, "she's good. She'll live."

But the words don't sound like they're for him to hear. Sawyer cards a hand through Violet's matted hair, brushes away the ash from her rounded cheek. Oliver can't stop staring at the bloodied end of Violet's arm, shards of bone protruding from the stump.

He almost makes a half-hearted joke about how it's a shame she's never going to make pro now that she's handicapped, but the words turn his stomach and sour his tongue, and the truth is, Quidditch is the last thing on his mind right now. In fact, he's just angry. And tired. And all he wants to do is pull Sawyer into bed and sleep for the next week.

—

After, 1999

It isn't immediate.

The breakdown, that is.

Harry lives to slay Voldemort, fulfilling his lifelong prophecy as the legendary Chosen One, and Sawyer sits with him and his girlfriend, Ginny, at Violet's bedside in the hospital after a long night of surgery, just staring at the bandaged stump of her arm. Oliver provides cups of tea and biscuits, and they eat in shell-shocked silence, exhausted to the bone but still not quite believing the definitive end has come. The war is over, and yet, the battle still lives under their skin. But they dust themselves off, leave the ruin and rubble of Hogwarts behind, and they go home to bury their dead.

Fred's funeral date is set for next month. Sawyer has to hold Oliver steady throughout the entire affair, and when his hands begin to shake through the eulogy, she threads her fingers through his and gives him something solid to anchor himself to.

When they return to their apartment, the flowers above the mantle are withered beyond salvaging and there is the palpable pall of tragedy cast over the space, their walls indifferent to the death and destruction they'd witnessed and come crawling out of in the past twenty-four hours. All they can do is stand in the vestibule of their flat and let it sink in. They made it out. They made it home. They wait for the words to come, so that they can name all of the unbearable and insidious things crawling inside their skin, packed tight and overflowing, but there is only the hammering silence. Sawyer can still smell burning flesh, can still hear Nia's body exploding, the flash of Violet's hair as she tackled Sawyer out of the way of the next curse, partially suffering Nia's fate herself. Oliver seeks her hand out to make sure she's really there. He sees Fred dying over and over and over. If only he'd been a shade quicker.

How are they to return to such tender domesticity after all that?

"Let's shower first," Oliver says, his voice sounding strange, as if it were severed from his body. He blinks at her. "Then I want to sleep for five days straight."

They do just that, only rising to eat and use the bathroom on occasion.

Sometimes Sawyer wakes up screaming for Violet to run, wrenched from the nightmare by a hand anchoring her to the present. Sometimes Oliver doesn't even realise he's crying until his face is wet and Sawyer's calloused hands are gently wiping away the tears. They dream about their friends, both dead and living, dying a thousand times over even though some of them are only a phone call away.

After the war, life resumes.

Just like that, there are groceries to buy and laundry to do and Quidditch season to cut themselves into shape for. They don't read the papers. They don't talk about the battle. Perhaps that latter part might have been the first fissure in the foundation, the first touchstone to which Sawyer would look back on and say, we could've done better.

Sometimes Sawyer wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of running water in the shower, and without him even having to tell her, she knows. Those same hands that would brew coffee in the morning and turn pancakes over on the stove had extricated their friends from rubble and ruin and carried their corpses up the stairs to lay them among the dead. How does one forgive the feeling of cold, dead skin under their own palms?

Self-destruction is easy to slip into after the fact that Hogwarts had turned into a mass grave right before their eyes.

Before the war, Sawyer never knew the weight of death. Especially death at her hands. She's thought about it before, but it's different when it's actually happened. When she knows, now, how easily a skull shatters under just the right amount of force, the weight of a body pitching out of the air, locked in a deadfall.

Her stomach's been in knots since. And she sees herself knelt in Nia's blasted remains, desperately trying to scoop her back together, the unsettling sensation of raw muscle and sinew and bone between her palms sending waves of potent revulsion roiling through her. It sits in her, this memory, like a spot of rot in the back of her head, threatening to spread through the grey matter of her brain. She can't fully wrap her head around why it happened. How it all fell apart so quickly.

How the fear spears through her each time she hears the wind slam the front door shut, the sound cutting through her core the way the spell blew Violet's arm off. How the growl of an engine sputtering sends her back in time into the corridor, where the wall had blasted apart, rubble collapsing upon them. How it sends her into a horrible tailspin that has her sprinting for the bathroom to hurl into the toilet bowl.

Frankly, it's embarrassing.

All this time, Sawyer has thought of herself as someone who could weather pain, who could take a hit and hit back twice as hard, who could let things roll off her shoulders and keep striding through the ruin and the carnage and come out without a scratch.

There was once a time when Sawyer had gotten to a place where she knew who she was. Now, she looks in the mirror and she sees haunted eyes and a runner. Weak. Slow. Lazy. It echoes in her head like a broken record, frustration claws at her chest, ripping apart the sutures that hold her skin in place, unravelling her at the seams one stitch at a time. All these old wounds resurfacing, violent and explosive on a hair-pin trigger—and she can do nothing to stop it. The anger is there, sitting on the surface of her skin, waiting for someone to brush up against her wrong, waiting for just enough friction that she could blind herself with it, washing the world red in black-out rage.

It all comes to a head the week before they're meant to play against the Falmouth Falcons—which, of course, Violet never signed onto.

All that work, only to have a dark hand sweep the pillars asunder and bring her newly founded self-control crashing down.

"What the hell is up with you?" Leonna Fletcher, one of the Chasers, corners her in the locker room after the scrimmage, lip curling in concern. "You're so off your game today."

Well, Sawyer wants to say, there was a war recently.

Instead, she ignores Leonna pointedly, stuffing her equipment into her duffle bag with more force than required.

Leonna doesn't take to the complete disregard kindly.

"Hey," Leonna presses, her voice sharpened by irritation, the knife burrowing into Sawyer's back, "I'm talking to you!"

It strikes a core memory Sawyer hasn't dug up in years, and for a flash of a moment, it's not Leonna's voice she hears ringing in her ears, but Nia's slicing to the forefront of her mind. A different time and a different place. But they were the same words. The same vigour. Her blood turns to slush, and she has the strangest shock of being dragged backwards in time.

Then Leonna's hand lands on Sawyer's shoulder, and it sends a flash of red slashing across her vision and before she knows it, Leonna's on the floor, howling in pain, and there's a dissonant whine in Sawyer's ears and her fist is bloodied, and she feels the strange sensation of hands dragging her back, arms roping around her body, wrenching her off Leonna's crumpled body. Then there's a weightlessness.

Then she's sitting in Coach's office, and he's staring at her with this indecipherable look in his eyes, and she can't find the fight in her anymore.

"I thought we talked about this," Coach says, and the thunderous disappointment in his voice hits Sawyer in the gut like a sucker punch. He purses his lips as he regards her for a moment. "I know you were at the battle of Hogwarts just a few months ago, and I know how something like that can change a person."

"I haven't changed," she bites out, but the words strike empty. She shrugs, picking at a piece of lint on her blue joggers. "If you want to fire me, just do it."

"I still want you on this team, Sawyer," Coach says, "but for the time being, you're a danger on the pitch. I have to put you on two weeks of administrative leave, and on the bench for the rest of the season. We've arranged for you to see a counsellor. And you'll need to be assessed before I can clear you and put you back in the line-up again." Coach pauses, looking like he wants to say more, but he shakes his head and fixes her with a look that nearly drives her into the ground. "I'm sorry about the way things turned out, Lee."

She doesn't answer him. She doesn't seem to have the words, or the energy. Rising to her feet, Sawyer turns on her heel, and walks right out without another word.

And that's that.

The two weeks of admin leave are spent in silence. She sees the counsellor in the first week, and she spends that entire session in silence, too. The counsellor doesn't say anything to needle her. Joanna seems to have rather acutely picked up on the fact that Sawyer's testing her, so she spends the entire session staring back, that infuriatingly soft, unconditionally positive smile on her lips nearly sending Sawyer into a rage. In their next session, Sawyer starts talking.

At home, though, things are different. When Sawyer wakes up on most days, Oliver is already gone, just a post-it note with a hastily scribbled Love you left behind next to a glass of water. Even though they live together, they barely see each other. She doesn't tell him about the fight, even though she knows he knows. She doesn't talk about the thorns of memory burrowing under her skin, how she can't touch anything anymore without wanting to destroy it. She turns nasty, and she doesn't quite know how to make the words come anymore. It's too tiring, too effortful, and all she wants is to be left alone. She avoids Oliver when she can.

("Hey," he says, on a Friday evening when she returns from practice, still sidelined and still seeing Joanna to appease Coach. "Can we talk?"

"What's there to say?" She asks him.

Frustration flickers over his expression. "Are you angry with me?"

Sawyer stares at him for a moment, then she lets out a cold laugh.)

Rio and Marcus try barging into the flat to get to the bottom of the situation, but she forces them away, too. It's Quinn who has to pull them away. It's Jeremy who says to give her space. But that space has been dormant for weeks now, and as the days flit by, it turns into months, and now it's a gulf, and Sawyer hasn't spoken to anyone about anything important or real in half a year.

She's ashamed, really. That's the truth of it. She doesn't know who she is anymore. She's watched too many people die. At night, she closes her eyes against the burn of the glow-in-the-dark stars painted into their ceiling, their light repelling her now.

Oliver doesn't quite know how to reach her anymore. But he, too, can't really talk about the things he dreams about, how he can't talk to the Beaters on his team without seeing red hair and laughter. He hides it well from her, pretends it's all fine. Instead of pushing her to talk again, he goes in the other direction, giving her the space she so desires. He hangs out with his teammates and his original circle of friends. He doesn't talk to Marcus about Sawyer, but Marcus seems to pick up on something that Oliver can't see. Sometimes Marcus asks if everything's alright. All Oliver can do is shrug and say, why wouldn't they be?

Somehow, the lying is much worse than the stonewalling. Somewhere along the way, he's started to feel like a visitor in his own home.

Bit by bit, the communication breakdown between them reveals a vacuous rift with such an immense gravity at its core that nothing can patch it up.

He so desperately wants her to talk to him, but it's exhausting for him, too, to keep prying the truth from her, to keep pulling teeth.

So he tells her, when she comes home from another practice that feels a lot like the ones she'd endured in Hogwarts, that apathy creeping beneath her skin, a creature of survival.

"We can't do this anymore."

Even though they're standing under the same roof, in their cramped little kitchen, Sawyer can feel the continental drift between them. Mountains that once upon a time couldn't break Oliver out of Sawyer's tenacious grasp seemed to jam the reception between their mouths and now Sawyer could hear nothing except the static of her own heart.

Under the bright yellow light of their kitchen, she can see the exhaustion etched into the bags under his eyes, the way the light had faded from his smile, and the way his shoulders are sloped, as if he'd seen this coming.

And, deep down, she, too, had known.

Nothing good can last. Especially not in her hands.

She drops her bag on the floor.

"If that's how you really feel," Sawyer says, more like a statement than a question, though it could be read as either. Her voice is steady, calm. She's already seen this coming, though the ache that cleaves through her from the inside strikes her with a renewed ferocity. It hurts, losing someone. Hurts even more knowing that he's making the decision to walk away. But her face is blank, betraying no emotion. If he wants to leave, it wouldn't be fair to render the process more difficult for him than it already is. If he ran back to her out of guilt because of her own sadness, that would be incredibly selfish, she decides. If he wants to leave, he can leave. And she can decide if it's worth it to pick up the pieces once the door shuts behind him and she's left alone to the sound of her own pain.

"I—" Oliver starts, suddenly unsure. But she reads the resolve in his eyes and she knows he's just figuring out the words to deliver the blow. What was once so easy is stuck in the lump in his throat, strangling his voice. "I'm tired."

"So am I."

"And?"

"What do you want me to say?" Sawyer asks. there's not a trace of feeling in her tone. No malice or melancholy or anger. Only understanding. "Would you like if I stopped you? Would that change your mind?"

"No," Oliver says, slowly. His voice is soft. Low. Defeated. Not like his image on the pitch after a match—golden and radiant in his victorious absolution. "No, it wouldn't."

"Then, it's easy," Sawyer says, setting him free, "you can leave whenever you'd like."

Oliver comes to stand in front of her, green eyes boring into her dark ones, his expression pinched, as though this was somehow hurting him. She watches the column of his throat as he swallows, conflict thundering across his face. He pulls her in, hands coming up to grasp her jaw, fingers sliding through her hair, and the warm and fiercely tender kiss he presses to her forehead is loaded, resigned. This is the stamp, the final mark.

"I love you," he whispers into her hairline, his voice raw with some unchained emotion, the strain in his throat plucking at her guts. "I love you."

"I know," she tells him, and her voice wavers a little, but she reigns all her emotions in and presses them under her heel. And now, as she had once told herself multiple times, years prior, they are nothing.

She hears the ragged exhale rush out of him.

Then he lets her go, stepping away and heading for the door.

It isn't fair, she thinks, the empty feeling blasting through her chest as she watches his retreating back, his hands stuffed into his pockets. It isn't.

It is, though, a crueller voice within hisses. You did this. You started it.

You ruin everything.

The truth is, they were clinging onto a dead thing, dragging its corpse around, hoping—hoping for what? All that grief was never beautiful. It was just a dead and dying thing with nothing left to resuscitate, and in all their shared stubbornness, he'd been the one to break the spell and amputate before the rot could spread any further. Now, there's just its ghost standing in the kitchen, a cold spot right where the sound of the front door slamming shut had severed the thread, replaying that single moment over and over and over.

✷

Why even try to get right?
When you've outgrown a lover
The whole world knows but you.
I guess it's time to let go of this
endless summer afternoon.

✷

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

heyyyy...... Heyyyyyyyyyy how y'all doin.......

sorry they were too happy i had to break them up. can't have too much fluff in a taryn fic! we're in here for the suffering :)

but in all seriousness, i think the trauma sustained from the war would be such an interesting topic to cover in this fic. We all know that the main discussion point of SKOD was healing from childhood trauma, but now we're going into the topic of the trauma of adulthood. i had to keep the theme consistent. i hope the pain is worth it!!

also, i spent a whole week writing this 10,000+ word prologue in a manic fever. literally abandoned everything else - even my originals - to bang this one out. hopefully it's coherent and makes sense because, characteristically, i refuse to edit. no proofreading - we die like fred weasley.

so!!! onto the break-up. honestly i hope i did the motivations for the breakdown of their relationship justice. miscommunication tropes are THE worst but i think this sort of miscommunication - stonewalling and avoidance - is worth exploring in a relationship dynamic. now, do i think that makes them toxic? not really. they're both dealing with a lot and it's pretty normal for traumatised individuals to regress. sawyer, as we all know, isn't the best at using her words. she's abrasive and somewhat avoidant. post-war trauma brings out the worst in people sometimes.

and oliver - we can't really blame him from leaving. i think most of us would, too, if we were in that situation, knowing that we can't fix the other person, knowing that staying would be far more destructive than walking away. sawyer just needed a shock to the system.

the worst part, in my opinion, is that they both have very different perspectives of the break up. sawyer thinking oliver's given up on her and doesn't think she's worth it anymore vs. oliver thinking she literally doesn't care/is indifferent to the fact that he ended it