VIOLET (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

22.

"Oh," he said. "No. I mean last night."

"No," Caiti said. She looked back at the street. "No, I've been thinking about it for a while. A couple months, maybe."

She said this without hesitation or embarrassment and the last bit of a knot in his stomach unclenched. "Okay," he said. "Good."

The light turned then and they hurried across the street, avoiding the puddles.

—-

The rest of the afternoon passed far too fast. After they'd finished lunch, the rain had started to let up, so they'd gone back to the beach which, given the weather, was pretty well deserted. They had walked a while, but eventually they just found a spot to sit and they had talked for hours and hours without pause about all sorts of things, both serious and inconsequential.

As night fell, they found somewhere to grab dinner and sat at a table by the window where they could watch all the muggles parading by in their Halloween costumes. "They got the pointy hats right, I suppose," Caiti had said as another witch passed by the table.

"How about the snaggleteeth and the warts?" grinned Marlowe.

Caiti smacked his arm indignantly.

"I'm only kidding," he'd said easily. Then he'd looked back out the window when he added, "You know I think you're beautiful.

By the time they finally headed back to the hotel it was late and Caiti was tired, but she didn't feel like sleeping. There were only a few hours left of their trip and she wasn't at all ready to go back home, back to normal. They kissed for a while, but nothing like the night before. It was different, sweeter.

Eventually, they just lay in the dark, Caiti's head on Marlowe's chest, his heart beating right beneath her ear.

"This was so perfect," she said quietly. "The best gift ever."

Marlowe's hand slid beneath her t-shirt to rub her back. "I'm glad," he said. Then after a pause. "I can't wait till it's like this all the time."

"I know," she whispered. She had sometimes entertained the thought of moving out of her parent's house, of moving in with Marlowe like Sean and Evelyn had, but she didn't have a job right now except one day a month, and while she was compensated well for brewing the Wolfsbane potion each full moon, it wasn't enough to live off of. She knew perfectly well that Marlowe could have afforded rent all on his own, but she didn't want to do it that way. She didn't want to rely on him. If they were going to live together, she wanted it to be a partnership.

And anyway, she knew Marlowe's mum wasn't keen on him moving out just yet, with everything that had happened. She was still so worried about him.

Marlowe pushed up the hem of her shirt for better access to her skin and after a minute of feeling his fingers catch again and again on the bunched up fabric, she sat up a bit and pulled it over her head, catching the quickest glimpse of Marlowe's smile before she settled back down, now skin to skin with him.

In some ways, she thought, as his fingers drew long pathways down her back, it was probably better this way, waiting a while to live together. What they had already was so good and it was nice to think how much there still was to look forward to.

—-

Caiti felt energized after their trip. She still didn't know what she was doing exactly, but she had found a new appreciation for her research. She found she didn't dread it so much. All that next week, she went into the greenhouse and just tried things, one train of thought leading to the next and the next and the next, until finally one night she had the closest thing to a breakthrough she'd had since she'd first read about the sun violet.