(no subject)
If the chaser wishes to chase, Without broomstick, to seek this face/Then tonight when the clock strikes 9, I'll be waiting where Burke and wall align.
It seems easy enough. All Bela needs to do is show up by the portrait at 9 pm.
8:15…she gives up trying to study.
By 8:30, she’s staring in the mirror, her heart pounding and her face flushed. She tries to calm herself down but so many thoughts and questions are going through her head.
8:45…she’s given up trying to decide on any Muggle clothing and settles for wearing her usual Slytherin robes. No point in dressing up when she doesn’t know who she is dressing up for.
It’s then when she realizes that it’s 8:45 and she should probably get going.
She’s not quite sure how she spent those last 15 minutes. She remembers at one point being stopped by someone in her house…Ruby?...and they may have asked something about Sam Winchester since it was common knowledge that her and Sam were practically BFFs, despite the 2 year age gap. She think she may have also stumbled at some point in her haste to be on time, and then purposely stopped and walked slower to be fashionably late, but then began walking fast again since she wasn’t sure if she should be fashionably late. Why did these things have to be so complicated?
By the time she rounded the corner and had the entrance to the dungeons in sight, she did a double take. What the hell was Michael St. Onge doing there?
With his blond locks tousled casually in that untamed way she found so undeniably sexy and clad in a crisp, cream colored dress shirt that brought out the gold in his Gryffindor tie, rolled up to the elbows in a hasty manner that could have only been done out of frustration, something about his posture seemed unsettled. Almost as if he were…worried? Nervous?
Michael St. Onge…nervous? The same Michael St. Onge who Bela thought had no clue who she was even though she remembered in full detail the few awkward conversations they have had, the way he always seemed to look through her instead of at her while she tripped over her words and tried not to hyper ventilate. This was also the same Michael St. Onge who only seemed to have three emotions: indifference, annoyance, and annoyance that bordered on anger. He was never the most expressive person.
Trying to push down that urge to hyper ventilate, Bela breathed deeply and started towards Michael who had yet to notice her. For a minute, she dared hope that maybe she hadn’t read Michael right in the past and that maybe his being here meant something she had only dared dream.
“-does not appear to acknowledge my affections,” Michael complained, although his voice still held most of its usual cool neutrality. “My name holds a lot of clout outside of Hogwarts and yet I-I am the one who has to bite tooth and nail for her to so much as look at me.”
As Bela arrived by Michael’s side, she only just noticed that he wasn’t alone. His complaints were being directed at a petite Gryffindor who, unlike Michael, was still clad completely in her uniform. Although, for once, Jo had her hair done in soft, blond waves that curled slightly at the tips in a way that was both attractive and unusual. But it suited her heart-shaped face and Bela had to avert her eyes before she was caught staring.
“She not worth-“
But Jo cut herself off when she noticed Bela’s arrival. Her cheeks reddened but she folded her arms over her robes and smirked. “Evening, Talbot.”
“Don’t you have some place you should be, Harvelle?” Bela asked, going into their usual banter.
For once, though, the usual snarky retort seemed lost on Jo’s lips and her expression almost looked hurt. Bela, however, had little time to feel guilty about that when Michael directed his cool, blue eyes on her, regarding her with little interest.
It took a moment for Bela to collect her thoughts and find the courage to speak, breaking the almost unbearable silence that had fallen on the three. “I-I hope I’m not late.”
Michael glanced at his watch. “It’s 9:06.”
He seemed a bit surprised. Bela, though, shook off the feeling that maybe she was misjudging this situation and pressed on.
“I-I got y-your letter and-oh, bollocks, this is-I wasn’t expecting-I apologize but I really wasn’t expecting it to be you,” Bela babbled softly, “But-that’s not to say-I’m not disappointed. Not at all.”
“My letter?”
Michael said the words slowly, brows drawn together.
“The letters you sent,” Bela said again. Although with each passing second, she was losing confidence in this conversation as Michael was growing more and more perplexed. “You’ve been sending them all week. And tonight’s Valentine’s Day so you had asked that I meet you…here…?”
From behind her, Bela heard Jo slap her palm to her face. This was making even less sense.
If anything, Bela really didn’t expect Michael’s reaction to be quite what it was as it from confusion and hardened to anger.
“Did he send you here?” Michael demanded, his cold eyes burning into Bela’s in a way that made her flinch. “Well?”
“…what?”
“Did. He. Send. You. Here?”
Michael annunciated each word carefully, as if speaking to a young child. When Bela didn’t say anything, Michael sighed. “First, Gabriel runs off with my date and then he sends one of his floozies to distract me. Typical. I shouldn’t have put it past that snake to do something so under-handed.”
He turned on his heels, preparing to storm off but paused for a moment. In that moment, Bela had felt herself break in a way she hadn’t expected, the sting of pain shooting through her leaving her sick in a way she hadn’t really felt before. Her eyes stung with embarrassed tears but she held back as Michael fixed his gaze on her one final time.
“Tell that prick when you see him he could do better next time,” Michael said coldly. As he stormed off, Bela heard him mumble, “A Slytherin?” and the disgust in his voice twisted that knife deeper into her already shattering heart.
A bitter tear trailed down Bela’s cheek and she hastily wiped it away. The shocked expression on Jo’s face, who Bela had forgotten was there, made her face flare up with humiliation.
Anna had been 100% positive that the notes weren’t written by Gabriel or his usual accomplice, Balthazar. And from the many pranks Bela had witnessed by these two over the years, she has also come to familiarize herself with their writing. But if not Michael or Gabriel, then who else could have sent them?
“I-I’m sorry,” Jo mumbled. “I-I wasn’t expecting Michael to-“
And then everything seemed to click. Jo, who is in her DADA class. Jo, who of course would know about Bela badgering Dean for that bloody book. Jo, who must somehow also know what kind of chocolate Bela likes.
Jo sent the letters.
“You-you did this,” Bela whispered.
“I know, it’s weird, right? But-“
But Bela cut her off, feeling angry tears slip down her cheeks. “That was a low blow, Harvelle. You know how I feel about Michael and you let me believe that he sent those letters?!”
Now Jo seemed just as confused as Michael had been. “Wait, Bela! That’s not what I was trying to do!”
“Don’t even think of EVER speaking to me again, Harvelle! You’ve done some bloody cold things before but this really takes the cake!”
Bela wanted to cry. She wanted to fling herself into a hole and die. Never had she been this embarrassed in her entire time at Hogwarts.
However, she felt Jo grip her elbow tightly as she tried to storm back to the Slytherin dormitories. “You’re not listening to me! I didn’t write those letters so you’d think I was Michael!”
Bela shrugged her hand off. “And what else do you expect me to believe?!”
But when she turned to fix an angry glare at Jo, she felt her eyes fall to the rose Jo was clutching in her other hand. Yet, Bela didn’t quite know what any of it meant and instead of pressing further, she used the pause to walk away, her vision clouded with her tears.
When Elizabeth Burke shouted at the ‘Mudblood’s to ‘Be Quiet’, Bela didn’t even look at the portrait as she spat out a Silencio and was rewarded with muffled protests. Well, at least something about this evening had gone right.
*
Many thoughts raced through Bela’s mind in the 15 minutes it took for her to return to her dorm room. The first was the importance of keeping up a façade. 5 years and Bela has never so much as teared up even when arguments with her housemates, or more recently her Quidditch teammates, made her want to tear out her hair and scream in frustration. In a house that prided itself on maintaining its reputation for being well-bred, throwing a fit and crying would sooner welcome criticism than comfort. So by the time Bela made it to through the common room, her face was a blank mask, the only thing giving away her distress her red-rimmed eyes.
The next thought was that assignment she had due in Herbology the next morning and she mentally kicked herself for forgetting about it. But even her distress over having to get up even earlier to finish it was nothing compared to what came next.
Slamming the door to her dorm closed, everything hit her with a force similar to flying one’s broomstick into a brick wall.
Jo fancied her.
And Bela had done all but tossed her to the dragons in their last confrontation.
“Bollocks,” she sighed, stumbling into the dark room and throwing herself onto her bed. Although if anyone ever asked, Bela did not spend the rest of the night crying and slipping into an uneasy sleep. She was a Slytherin, after all.
*
During the Friday morning practice, Bela had a lot to think about as she flew around the pitch. For the most part, she tried to settle the guilt that pooled in her stomach when she realized that she had not only had a shitty Valentine’s Day but in the process, also managed to ruin it for Jo. She also tried not to think about how she cared that she had ruined it for Jo which, of course, meant that she thought about it.
Jo? Jo who had pegged Bela as her favorite Slytherin target since second year, throwing every insult under the sun at her when they were so much as in the same room? Jo who she disliked equally?
But beyond the question of why Jo had any interest in her, Bela should have been more bothered than she was that a female had singled her out as potential partner. Girls had never really caught her eye and yet when Bela really thought about it, she didn’t find anything unappealing about Jo. Jo wasn’t hideous looking and, hell, maybe there was something attractive about the fire in her eyes when she really dished it out.
In fact, if Bela were more honest with herself, she’d go as far as to say she may sort of-just a bit-fancy the Gryffindor in return.
…but could she really bring herself to ever act on such an attraction with another girl?
For a moment, Bela thought what it would be like if she were to kiss Jo’s soft lips…
“Ouch! Bloody hell!”
Bela rubbed at the place where the quaffle had hit her shoulder.
“If you’re finished daydreaming about rainbows and poppies or whatever it is you Muggleborns think about, maybe you’d like to start PRACTICING. You know, that bloody thing Quidditch players like to do sometimes,” Luther said, fixing a disapproving look at Bela.
Bela scowled but knew better than to throw back a nasty retort. She dipped down to the surface of the pitch and plucked the quaffle out of the snow. It was then that she knew what she had to do.
*
It was now or never. Maybe not the best time to corner the Gryffindor in the hallway, with only 15 minutes between the morning periods. It was the time that Bela would normally high-tail it to her Ancient Runes classroom which, of course, had to be at the very opposite end of the building in the lower levels from the Astronomy Tower she was coming from. But Bela wasn’t about to spend another class unable to concentrate with the burning guilt settled at the back of her mind. Her impatience coupled with Jo’s hasty attempt to avoid her gaze as she walked passed spurred the Slytherin into action.
“Jo!” Bela called out, louder than intended, as she grasped at Jo’s robes.
Jo didn’t seem to expect that and stumbled. But as she regained her footing, she tensed and averted her eyes, managing to just barely mumble a “what?” almost under her breath.
“I-uh, about yesterday…”
“I have class.”
The cold, blank response was more than Bela deserved. As Jo began walking away, in the direction Bela had just come from, the Slytherin quickly fell in stride behind her.
“I was a God-awful prat to you,” Bela began, “and for no reason. Had I not been so bloody daft-“
“Let me guess: you’d have said, “Sorry, but I don’t do pussy,” right?” Jo retorted. Bela didn’t have to be looking at her to see the eye roll that surely followed. “Don’t see how that would have lessened the blow.”
“Give me some credit here, Harvelle,” Bela shot back, irritation now seeping into her voice. She glared as she skipped around a pair of Hufflepuff first years she almost bowled down. “You could have been a bit more obvious. Maybe signed your name on the letters. You can write your name, can’t you?”
“Merlin, must you always be such a bitch!” And Jo stopped abruptly and turned around, shoving a pointed finger accusingly into Bela’s chest. “I thought you were here to apologize.”
It was then that Bela got a really good at Jo. Similar to her, the Gryffindor looked as if she had barely slept the night before, eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Her face was shades paler than normal and the obvious distress that she was having a hard time hiding made Bela’s heart tug in a way she was unfamiliar with. But if there’s one thing that kept her from crumbling, it was the fire in those warm, brown eyes, the same fire that sent a trill up Bela’s spine and made her hot all over.
And when Jo’s eyes widened in surprise, pink tongue darting out to nervously lick her lower lip, Bela became aware of just how tempting those lips truly were. She wondered how she had never noticed it before.
“Apologize? I admitted to being a prat; that’s hardly an apology.”
“Always gotta be so literal?”
“Always have to read too much into things?” Bela demanded.
“Fuck this. I’m going to class!”
Bela, however, wasn’t finished yet. When Jo attempted to again leave, she grabbed the Gryffindor and tugged her back roughly. “I didn’t finish what I wanted to say. Happy Valentine’s Day, Harvelle.”
Before Jo could make another protest, Bela leaned in and captured the Gryffindor’s lips in a chaste kiss. In even the briefest of touches, the contact sent a spark tingling across her skin, warming her to her very core. Jo’s shoulders had been tense where they rested beneath Bela’s hands but after a moment, it was as if the Gryffindor melted under her touch as a small moan fell against Bela’s lips.
When Bela pulled back, she did her best to appear cocky to hide the heat that filled her cheeks. “You don’t taste that bad…for a Gryffindor.”
Jo tried to shake away her shock and there was the return of that look again: annoyed Jo. Bela could handle annoyed Jo. “Feeling experimental, Talbot?”
“I’ve always fancied forbidden fruit. And what can I say? I like it when they have a bit of fight in them.”
“Good. Because you’ll have to do better than that if you want to get in my pants.”
With a smirk, Jo abandoned Bela in the hallway, a new bounce in her step that was a sharp contrast to what Bela had seen only minutes before. Her lips still burned from that light kiss and if she was in doubt before, she now knew that she just had to have more.
“Oh, it’s on, Harvelle.”
Bela was 7 minutes late for her Ancient Runes class. Her house lost 5 points. But it was worth it.
*
The afternoon winter chill settled deep in Bela’s bones as she shivered up in the pitch. Clad in only her Quidditch robes and hovering 5 meters above the ground, the light breeze was stronger up here, without the protection of the bleachers to block away the bite of winter. Her teammates hovered nearby, some glaring as members from Ravenclaw hastily assembled themselves at the opposite ends of the pitch on that cold Saturday.
If there was one member of the team who seemed to be oblivious to the cold and may as well have been trouncing in a field of flowers, it was the over jovial Gabriel Milton. Not only had his Valentine’s Day went swimmingly (he wouldn’t shut up about it all morning and Bela was near the point of hexing him) but “good behavior”, and Castiel’s acquiescence, had convinced Crowley to revoke the promised suspension of both Balthazar and Gabriel from future Quidditch matches.
“She’s cheering for me,” the Slytherin beater said, with a smirk.
“…you realize we’re playing against her house?” Balthazar replied, indicating to Ravenclaw.
“She still wants me.”
“…she’s sitting in the Ravenclaw’s end…”
“She couldn’t keep her hands offa’ me on Thursday. Sexy, little witch.”
“…with Michael…”
That seemed to bring Gabriel down from cloud nine.
“…what the fuck’s she doing with that douchebag?”
Gabriel started flying over when Luther began shouting at him.
“Back in position, Milton! We’re here to play bloody Quidditch, not chase around the birds!”
Gabriel reluctantly settled back to where he had been chatting with Balthazar. “I’m whooping some serious Gryffindor ass after this match.”
…so much for “good behavior”.
“Speaking of Gryffindors…I spy with my little eye a little Gryffin in red and gold.”
“They all wear red and gold, Balto.”
“Open your eyes, Gabby. This one’s in our neck of the woods.”
Bela also followed her gaze to where Balthazar was indicating and her eyes widened. Among the sea of green and silver stood out a lone Gryffindor, a short, blond-haired witch who looked out of place as it was, never mind that there was a very comfortable distance between her and all the other Slytherin spectators on the bench.
“Isn’t that Harvelle?” Meg asked, glancing distastefully at the Gryffindor.
“I can’t remember the last time a Gryffindor cheered us on,” Gabriel said, shaking his head. “Kids these days.”
Jo seemed aware that most of the Slytherin team along with their spectators were giving her odd looks and sneers. She shifted uncomfortably, red-faced and very much an outcast but when she caught Bela’s eye, she waved and this only redirected attention to Bela.
“Something you’re not telling us, Talbot?” Gabriel asked. He was grinning like the Cheshire cat in those Alice and Wonderland stories her mother had read to her as a child.
Bela blushed. “We’re-we-it’s like-“
“Bela here’s a little firecracker,” Balthazar said, hovering closer and patting her on the back. “Bout time someone’s broken status quo.”
As embarrassing as it was, and if she ignored the angry looks from Luther, Raphael, Virgil, and Meg, Bela felt a part of her warm up all over again as she realized that maybe there was more to this than heated exchanges and stolen kisses. Maybe there was something more buried beneath the surface and with time, if she dug deep enough, she’d discover what it felt like to have conversations without words, much like Cas and Dean seemed to do with their eyes, or how a single twitch of the lips or a slight slouch in posture could tell worlds about another human being, in the way that Sam and Jess often read each other.
But for now, the snitch has been released and the quaffle’s been put into play. And for once, someone is cheering for Bela.