Almost

Chapter 50: The Whole Lot

That day and night were nearly unbearable. Katherine's stayed in her pajamas while Ezra plied her with water and toast and herbal tea and anything he could get her to eat. They sat on the couch, out in the courtyard, even in the sitting room. But Katherine just shook and scratched at herself until he made her put on her dragon-skin gloves. She was in no shape to go see her father, so they held off on the trip.

She kept having to do magic just to get it out of her system. She changed the cupboards, which now bore multicolored polka dots. She made the trees three inches shorter, then three inches taller. Her magic gave up and shorted mid-spell, and the desk from the guest room that she'd conjured down to the sitting room fell halfway down the stairs, shattering at Ezra's feet. He had it fixed and moved in a matter of seconds while Katherine counted. 70 seconds.

She tried to sleep on and off. Knowing how the potion had left her body rested but her magic worse the last time, she was weary of using it, and Ezra compromised if she stayed away from caffeine. So, they tried watching boring movies on the couch to get her to doze off. He sang to her. She crocheted as best she could remember what Molly had taught her. He tried to explain all of the intricate Quidditch fouls, of which there were over 700, but apparently what Bellow had done by sending a bludger into the crowd could be considered "bumphing." Katherine insisted, through gritted teeth, that couldn't be a real word.

Between the jolting magic, the caffeine headache, and her own frustration with herself, Katherine was a mess. But, eventually, it started to subside.

The scratching, though still there, began to dull. She still couldn't manage more than a cat nap, with Smithwick curled at her feet and Nestor flying around when she could keep him alight. Crawley had actually asked for him to be there—he was an easy way to see what Katherine's magic was doing.

"No wonder it's gotten so obvious when you go through memories," Ezra said, watching the sparks leaping off the woodpecker. "He's getting stronger though. Brighter, calmer. Do you feel any better?"

"A bit," Katherine admitted, buried under blankets and sipping on tea. She was conjuring tiny teal flower petals, trying to modify the Patronus spell so she could put it into different forms.

"Maybe you should give your magic a break. Find a regular task to keep you occupied." Ezra looked around the house, already charmed to be spotlessly clean and tidy. "We still need to pick a first dance song."

Katherine sighed, letting the petals dissipate. "Everyone will expect it to be a jazz standard. We're pretty predictable."

"Classic," Ezra corrected her, summoning her laptop to float down to his outstretched hand. "And we can pick whatever we want."

So, they sat at the kitchen table, making a list as they flitted from Aloe Blacc to Frank Sinatra to The Lumineers to Shirley Bassey... around and around. Katherine vetoed show tunes, Ezra begged her to just record her modified version of They Can't Take That Away from Me as she'd sung it for him what felt like a lifetime ago. He even promised to write in his own verse, but she decided they couldn't look her family in the eyes if she got that cheesy.

They went back to Iowa to skim her mother's CDs for inspiration, and so Katherine could look at the wards. The home had been left untouched, much to her relief. As they were looking, Katherine showed him all of the things in the box of her mother's belongings.

"You should wear these," Ezra said, his thumbs skimming over the pearl earrings. "Something old."

"George said my grandmother gave them to her. Said every mother should have a pair of pearls."

"Ivy or Molly?"

Katherine took them his outstretched fingers. "Ivy. I didn't even know I was named after her until I talked to Mark that one time."