Chapter Twenty-Five
They sat opposite each other, at the same table she had been sat at when he had come to torment her, all that time ago. Annals
of the right years piled up next to them. Both of them flicking through, studying pictures of students who looked suspiciously
similar to anyone around now. Making lists of professors and patrons and members of the magical authorities in close proximity.
Everything quiet and peaceful, until she found another picture of him.
And this one was something else.
It wasn’t just a side profile. It was dead on, and close up, over a caption that said Most Prolific Library Patron 1988. Everything about it ridiculous, including the little placard he was holding, proclaiming his title. But his face—god, his
face. For the first time, she didn’t just accept that he was handsome.
She understood what it was to feel desire over the kind of handsome he had been. And it made her blurt very foolish things
out, before she could think. “My god, you were gorgeous,” she said. Then knew that he had snapped a look up at her. She practically felt it happen and cringed.
She couldn’t look at him.
Even though he didn’t laugh. He just stayed silent for a moment, then finally and rather carefully spoke, into the suddenly tense air. “So you think I was better the way I was then,” he said. While she did her best not to meet his gaze.
“Not for most people. I mean you are probably more classically handsome now.”
“Yes, but classically handsome isn’t the least bit attractive to you.”
“What does that matter?” she asked, confused enough that she looked up without thinking. But she wasn’t confused once she
had, because suddenly the man in the picture and the one sat with her were the same. Exactly the same. The softness, the sideburns, the messy hair. God, it was like seeing a ghost.
“I think you know why it does.”
“You shouldn’t do that. Someone else will see.”
“They won’t. This is just for you—if you want it to be.”
She shook her head, almost angrily. “No, okay? No. It’s not your exact features that matter, it’s not your hair being a certain
way. I just—I like when I can see you, underneath. The good stuff, inside.”
“And now you can see it better.”
“I could already. The second you let yourself be kind.”
“Really warms up my face, doesn’t it? I was surprised by that, honestly. How much I changed, whenever I made myself cold and
cruel. I really didn’t have to do much, to seem like a different person to anyone who saw me.”
“And you don’t have to do anything more for me. Honestly, I don’t even know why you would think you need to, considering I
looked like that. And now I look like me.”
He leaned forward at that.
Put his elbow on the table, chin in one hand.
“Why don’t you explain to me what you mean by that,” he said.
But of course now she didn’t really want to. She tried to pick up a book, instead. Then watched, as he used his wand to turn
it into butterflies. They fluttered up to the rafters, while she fought the blush rising over her face. “Well that was better
than spiders, at least.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Come on. Tell me what you meant.”
“You know what I meant. I was very beautiful, then.”
“And you think you’re not now.”
“Of course I’m not. You even said—” she started to say, frustrated.
While he stayed calm and collected, as he cut her off.
“I don’t remember ever saying anything about the way you look. Mainly because the more you lie, the harder it gets to keep
track. Not to mention how shaky I know it would have sounded, if I’d tried.”
“So what would have been the truth, then?”
“When I first saw you my heart stopped.”
Her own did the same when he said it.
Though she tried not to let it show.
“Probably because you had just seen a ghost,” she said, half-laughing. Then she took in his expression, and even that poor
attempt died. It didn’t waver, it didn’t shift. He gave her no quarter at all, nowhere to hide. He was going to make her believe
this, no matter how hard she tried to not.
“Yes, that’s what I told myself at the time.
It was the shock that made me stare when I first saw you, like someone hypnotized.
But then you must know it happened again, for the second.
I looked so long I knew I was making it too obvious—and yet I simply could not stop.
Like every facet of your face made me drunk, dragged me down, undid every bit of my resolve.
All I wanted to do was drink more deeply, and not just then.
In the corridor afterward, in the lecture hall.
I used to force myself to face forward, and still I stole glances whenever I could.
In the end I skipped lectures, made myself wait outside.
And I didn’t do anything because I was a fool, lost to something that wasn’t there.
I did it because in every single way, you are as lovely to me as the day we met.
Whether by the beauty of your soul shining through, or the sweetness of it that just is anyway—I don’t know.
Or care. I only understand that this is the case,” he said, so clear and direct and unembarrassed about it that she didn’t know how to cope.
She wanted to look away, midway through. To escape that impossible surety.
Though she knew why she didn’t.
Because she didn’t want to break the spell. The one not made by magic, but by a thousand feelings, falling over them both.
If we keep going then we might, we might, she found herself thinking. Hardly able to imagine what might could be, and yet knowing so well, at the same time.
It made her move her hand close to his, on the table.
Not quite touching. But close to it. Their fingertips brushed; she felt his legs shift under the table, until it was barely
a hair’s breadth from hers. And just as she thought that was enough, he parted his lips. He let his tongue curl up, over the
top one. While she tried to stay calm enough to ask what she needed to know.
“But she was more than that, though.”
“What more is there to be but kind, funny, intelligent, beautiful?”
“The way she seemed in that picture. The way I can feel sometimes but don’t know how to be in the same way. It’s the thing
I least understand but know that you liked. I know you loved it,” she said, more breathless than she intended.
But she just couldn’t help it. The flood of memories simply poured through her, the moment she started speaking about it.
Kissing him so passionately he sprawled back, onto some old couch in a house she couldn’t quite remember. Then the lust-stunned
look on his face, when she pulled away.
Her hand underneath one of the desks, in a lecture hall. Sliding up his thigh, as he squirmed. As he passed her a scribbled
note: Stop it, before I stop being able to control myself. But of course he hadn’t been able to at all, anyway. She had undone him completely, in a thousand different ways. Persuaded
him to make love to her in the sky, made him come using just a spell. Said his name, in such a manner that even that had made
him lose it.
And he quite obviously saw all this, all over her face.
“So you mean she knew how to seduce me,” he said, half-amused.
Even though it wasn’t amusing at all. “Yes. Exactly. She could just do it. I can feel that she could. I can see the way it affected you, all the time. Constantly, god, just constantly, I swear sometimes I don’t
even know where to look now, in my own head. When I saw that picture, I didn’t just think beautiful. I thought of you in that stairwell, that exact stairwell, begging her for more. One hand in your jeans, because you simply couldn’t wait.”
“You’re right, I couldn’t. But it wasn’t because she had some secret skill.”
“Then how? How did she manage to be like that? How was she that for you?”
She looked at him, utterly baffled. Able to see it all now, and feel it, but still struggling with how to fully grasp it.
How to step into it, with such ease. It felt impossible, despite the look all over his face.
He seemed to find the question completely inexplicable.
“There’s no great mystery,” he said. “It’s just the same thing you do, whenever something excites you. It shows on your face,
no matter how much you try to repress it, or hide it. The shock of how pleasurable it is to feel it, the need for more, the
eagerness. It used to drive me out of my mind—just as me feeling the same drove you out of yours. We loved the desire we inspired
in each other, Lil. We loved it almost as much as we loved everything else. It was the sweetest sort of bliss.”
“So you still feel that bliss now.”
“Of course I do.”
“In the stairwell. You wanted to.”
“I came so close to having you up against that wall, it horrified me.”
“And how does it feel now?”
She let the question hang in the air. And it did so easily, because said air seemed to have grown very heavy, suddenly. Much
like his gaze had. It held onto hers, in a way she could hardly drag herself away from. She didn’t want to drag herself away from it.
It was him who finally broke the deadlock.
“Like we should really focus on the problem we have,” he said.
Only he didn’t return to the books, their notes. He didn’t completely look away. He dipped his eyes down, for just a second, at the thing they were sat at. Then he let himself look up at her, from underneath his lashes.
And she knew what he was saying, with that look.
She knew it better than she knew her own self.
“True. But it’s hard to, when we’re sat at the exact table you fucked me over.”
“I didn’t fuck you over this table. I fucked you up against those shelves.”
“You did. And I loved every second of it.”
Those eyes drifted closed.
His lips parted.
Even as he tried to wrestle himself under control.
Be calm, be reasonable, just think about what this meant.
“We need to slow down,” he said.
And all she could think is: Oh god, we are about to go so fast.
“Honestly, I don’t think you want to. I don’t think you want to at all.”
“Of course I don’t. How can I, when even thinking that you might enjoy knowing what we did here makes my heart feel like it’s beating