The Calm Before (Previously "A Slytherin Fell For A Ravenclaw")

Chapter 3

"So," Taylor starts, giving me the strained smile that she's been using when anything involving Draco pops up. "did you have fun in there?"

I roll my eyes and bump her while we walk, making her stumble and both of us laugh. I feel bad, though. Most of our friendship so far has had my budding crush on Draco looming overhead, something that seems to make Taylor bite her tongue a bit harder each time it comes up. Our friendship must be more than that.

"In celebration of our first day of classes and our new status as roommates, I say we sneak some sweets from the Great Hall tonight and have a girls night," I suggest as we make our way to Transfiguration. Taylor looks up from her feet and smiles so widely that it runs out of room on her face and hops over to mine.

"Couldn't agree more," she says, still grinning.

***

Later that evening, after the sun has set and many of our classmates have gone to bed, Taylor and I try to muffle our laughter in the Ravenclaw common room.

"You can't be serious," I demand, wiping tears away from the corners of my eyes. She's just finished telling me a story of her dog at the foster home getting into her stash of Pepper Imps from Honeydukes.

"Deadly," Taylor confirms, clutching her chest. "When I caught him, he'd already swallowed a whole handful of them. Burped fire for a week!"

I scrunch up my nose in disgust and say, "Never liked those things. I'm more of a taffy girl."

"I don't care for them either, I only got them because they were my dad's favorite," Taylor tells me, sniffing back her laughter. I watch as her smile falls slowly from her face as her mind races. After talking for hours, we haven't really gotten very far into her backstory. All I know of is the foster home, which isn't really much. I decide quickly that we are close enough to dig deeper.

"You knew your dad?" I ask quietly, still smiling in a way that I hope she finds encouraging. Taylor shakes her head, eyes trained on the floor beneath us.

When she looks up at me, her expression is guarded as she says, "My mum left me a letter when she dropped me at Wool's orphanage. It doesn't tell me who they are, but it tells me things about them."

I give it a moment before asking, "What kinds of things?"

There are wheels turning in her mind, evident by the way she looks everywhere but in my eyes. I'm not sure she's ever told anyone these things, and I am honored to be the one to hear them. Mingling with the honor, though, is anxiety for my friend, who is clearly fighting an internal battle. It seems that the side in favor of sharing deep dark secrets wins out in the end, and Taylor snuggles down in her blue armchair before speaking.

"Mum writes that when I was born, they weren't together. She and dad, I mean. She had no one, and she couldn't take care of me on her own." Taylor says shakily. When she looks at me for encouragement, I smile warmly and lean slightly forward in my seat.

"My mum was a Hufflepuff, her name's Rosemary... Dad was a Slytherin, unnamed." she continues, tugging on the ends of her hair. "After they left Hogwarts, she says that dad sort of... shifted. This was back when You-Know-Who was still at large, and my father aligned himself with the dark side. He left my mum and me when I was only weeks old and never came back. He's still a death eater I reckon. I've never heard a word from either of them, other than my mum's letter."

Taylor's unearthed secret hangs above our heads, permeating the air in the common room like the stale smell of an old attic. From my perch on a loveseat about eight feet from Taylor's chair, I can see that her eyes are shining with tears. Her father... he's why she is so opposed to Slytherins. She probably thinks Malfoy would up and abandon me if we started something ourselves.

I decide quickly, with the feeling of Taylor's secret still coating my skin, that I will tell her what I discovered about my parents.

"My mum and dad were Slytherins, too," I tell her, trying my best to smile in light of the melancholic atmosphere around us. Taylor looks up at me with a furrowed brow and opens her mouth to speak, before confusing herself and closing it again. I get that feeling.

"Dumbledore told me last night after I was sorted," I explain, stretching my arms above my head. Our dynamic has shifted from distant when Taylor told her secret, back to normal when I told mine. Taylor doesn't feel alone anymore and my heart feels warmer.

Despite herself, my friend grins while she readjusts her position in her chair, moving from an almost cowering fetal position to stretched out with her legs draped over the chair's arm. She tilts her head back to look at the stars on the ceiling and I follow suit, finding a few constellations. Blush crawls onto my cheeks when I find Draco, tracing my eyes over all of its stars. Of course, someone as magnificent as the King of Snakes is named after a constellation.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Taylor says, "I'm glad you're here, Lex. Fifth year is brutal, I'm not sure I could've gotten through it if you didn't come along."

I smile at my friend in the firelight, thinking of my life a week ago versus today. Then, I was traipsing around my London flat, completely friendless and wondering if Hogwarts was all it was cracked up to be. Tonight, I sit with my best friend, proudly donning a blue and bronze jumper and snacking on treacle tarts that we snuck out of the Great Hall; which was no easy feat, and I spent a full minute scrubbing my hands free of the sticky syrup. But although we were sticky and tired from our five classes, I had never been so content in my life.