5. Chapter 5

Solo's not in the hospital wing. According to Madame Kalonia, he'd brought his injured colleague in and then left.

"Will Professor Hux be all right?" Rey asks.

"Nothing that bed rest and ten potions a day for three days won't cure," Madame Kalonia replies dryly. "Both teachers said it was a miscast hex?"

Ah. Solo and Hux have decided to work together to cover their asses. Rey offers a cautious nod.

"Well, I'm sure it's not my place to tell Headmaster Kenobi how to run his school, even if hexes flying around the classroom is a recipe for disaster," the healer sniffs. "Run along now, Miss Niima. You may inform your friends that your esteemed Potions professor will live to dock House points another day."

Rey hadn't gone to the hospital wing so she could update the other seventh years on Hux's condition, but she lets Madame Kalonia continue thinking otherwise as she hastily makes her exit. A while later, she's poking her head into the D.A.D.A. classroom and, sure enough, there he is— Professor Solo has summoned the desks back from wherever he'd banished them and is levitating them to their proper places one by one, affording the task far more concentration than it requires.

Steeling herself, Rey walks in.

A muscle works along Solo's jaw at her approach. He hasn't rolled down his sleeves yet and his expression is sullen and intense and, somehow, still so strangely lonely— at least to her.

It's the loneliness, more than anything else, that makes her stand beside him, draw her own wand, and help arrange the desks, the silence that lays heavy between them punctuated only by the creak of wood as it takes flight, its scrape against stone floors.

Finally, he speaks. "I thought it would be a good idea to tap into some genuine animosity, so your class could have an inkling of what a real wizarding duel looks like. I wasn't expecting Hux to get carried away. If it scared you— my apologies."

"I wasn't scared," Rey says. She'd been shocked, yes. Worried that he or Hux might end up killing the other, definitely. But the magic itself? She hadn't been afraid at all.

"It takes," she remembers Professor Krennic lecturing back in second year, months before the freak accident that landed him at St. Mungo's, "a certain kind of person to gravitate to the Dark Arts. A certain wildness."

There are rumors that Dark magic had been Krennic's undoing. That the unicorn hair core of his wand hadn't been suited for the kind of spells he was dabbling in during his spare time, and so it had backfired on him that fateful day in this very same classroom. Now he's a permanent resident of the Janus Thickey ward, his memory resetting every five hours.

The desk that he'd been levitating settles onto the floor and Solo glances at Rey out of the corner of his eye. "No," he muses, "I suppose you weren't scared at all. You looked— fascinated. Like you were trying to figure out the mechanism behind each curse."

He'd noticed her. He'd been watching her in the same way that she'd watched him from the crowd. Her heart gives a traitorous leap inside her chest; however, barely a second goes by after the last word of the sentence leaves his mouth when he sort of— shuts down, his chiseled features tightening into stone.

Almost as if he thinks he admitted to something that he shouldn't have.

Rey instinctively knows that, if she pushes, he'll only send her away. So she changes the subject instead, not looking at him as another desk hovers into the air at a flick of her wand. "Why is there genuine animosity between you and Professor Hux?"

"He annoys me." Solo's blunt response shades close enough to petulant that Rey has to bite back a smirk. "And the feeling's mutual. His father and my mother used to work closely together back when they were both with the International Confederation. They weren't friends either."

All Rey knows about Hux's father is that he's the former Minister for Magic who'd been removed from office on charges of embezzlement long before an owl dropped a letter into an eleven-year-old girl's bowl of cereal. It's consensus among Hogwarts students that this disgrace is the reason their Potions master is so... so like that.

"So Professor Hux's got a chip on his shoulder because your mum's president while his dad's in exile in Corsica?" Rey holds her breath, wondering if Solo will give her any grief for knowing that he's Leia Organa's son.

But he just blinks, then looks vaguely amused as always. "Corsica? Is that where Brendol is hiding?"

"Last I heard."

"How cliché."

The last couple of desks slide into place. They lower their wands, turning to face each other with an uncertainty that plucks at the air. If she takes one more step, he'll be within arm's reach.

She won't, though.

She can't.

"My parentage isn't exactly a secret," he says slowly, "but I'm hoping to keep a low profile during my stay here. Obviously, word's gotten around some, but I would appreciate your discretion, Miss Niima."

"I won't tell anyone, sir," she promises.

This time, the title hadn't been meant to goad or challenge or test the waters or anything like that. It had just flown out automatically, an ingrained response to six years of Miss Niima from other teachers.

Do his eyes darken, or is it just a trick of the light?

"Thank you." The words come out a little husky. He clears his throat. "For that, and for your assistance with the furniture."

"You're welcome," she says.

They resume staring at each other again. Solo's hair is mussed from the duel, a few locks falling over his pale brow. They call to Rey to sweep them back as she runs her fingers through his soft, lush mane. She imagines it, imagines playing with his hair as those bare, muscled forearms encircle her waist. He's such a big man. He will engulf her. The pit of her stomach curls with the hollowness of an impossible yearning.

✨✨✨

Rey doesn't even clearly remember how she leaves the D.A.D.A. classroom on that day. She can't pinpoint who made their excuses first. All she knows is that she turned and left and stumbled to the Great Hall to join her friends for lunch with knees like jelly and Professor Solo's face and wide shoulders and long legs and bare forearms burned into the insides of her eyelids.

Another weekend passes and she goes through the motions feeling like she's running a low-grade fever. He occupies every spare corner of her thoughts. She smells sandalwood and oakmoss and tobacco and copper everywhere she goes. Her dreams are a haze of disjointed fantasies that leave her uncomfortable and overheated when she wakes up.

Through it all runs a thread of curiosity as to where Solo had learned to fight like that, how he'd become so well-versed in Dark magic. And when she can't stand wondering anymore, Rey—

— goes to the library.

She doesn't know a lot about the trouble in America that Seff had mentioned. It had been a hot topic among Hogwarts students last year but, with the foreign affairs section of the Daily Prophet and their own teachers being so vague, there hadn't been a lot to go on aside from gossip and conjecture. The wizarding communities scattered throughout the globe tend to keep to themselves, each one having elevated magical secrecy to an art form. It had died down soon enough and the school had moved on to discussing whether Korr Sella and Doran Sarkin-Tainer were dating; a potential romance between a Slytherin and a Gryffindor had been far juicier than whatever strangers across the pond were getting themselves into.

But the mere fact that the International Confederation sent a post-assessment team speaks volumes about how bad it must have been...

Rey spends an entire free period poring over old issues of the American newspaper. Unfortunately, MACUSA officials seems to operate similarly to the British Ministry's policy of avoiding mass hysteria at all costs— most of the direct quotes the New York Ghost got out of them regarding the situation are fantastically dry. Rey doesn't end up learning much more than what she already knew— there had been a cabal of Dark wizards and witches styling themselves the First Order who'd tried to overthrow the government. It had been a small-scale revolt and, under the leadership of President Organa, MACUSA had nipped it in the bud in less than a year.

The cabal had been pureblood supremacists. They'd aimed to purge the wizarding world of half-bloods and Muggleborns. One of the more interesting direct quotes is from President Organa; she'd vowed early on in the conflict that they would be wiped out, that history would not remember their names.

Rey can't help but admire the woman whose photos grace the papers. Although slight of stature, Leia Organa radiates defiance and a fearsome spirit, her expression oftentimes as intense as that of her son's usual mien. Her dark hair is always braided in a different style from one picture to the next— each one so elaborate that Rey suspects they put the mysterious French twist to shame.

Her eyes are very much like Ben Solo's.

Towards the end of the conflict— a week before MACUSA announced that the First Order had been defeated, its leaders executed while the rest of its captured members awaited trial— there is an article stating that the President's husband had been attacked by Dark wizards, but he was expected to make a full recovery.

The Ghost gives precious few details, other than the fact that President Organa's husband is a Muggle.

✨✨✨

Rey sees Professor Solo far earlier in the week than she thought she would, and it's all because she forgot to do her homework for Ancient Runes.

It had completely slipped her mind. The seventh years are drowning in a workload that's horribly disproportionate to the amount of classes they're taking and something was bound to slip through the cracks eventually— Rey can only be thankful that it wasn't Potions or Transfiguration. Instead of failing Rey on the homework and docking points from the House that she herself is head of as the rigorously fair Mon Mothma would have done— or failing Rey on the homework, docking House points, and assigning a detention, in Hux's case— Professor Yoda merely makes Rey stay behind after class and write I WILL NOT FORGET TO DO MY HOMEWORK AGAIN on the blackboard. Five times, in runic.

She has no fucking idea how to even begin to go about translating the word homework, but she gives it her best shot. Yoda is tiny and geriatric and eccentric, and it's not long before he gets bored and goes to sleep at the corner desk in the back. He'd enchanted the blackboard to wipe clean every time there's a mistake in the completed sentence and, as a result, Rey's been here thirty minutes now, stuck on the correct runes for homework.

This is worse than detention.

She's so focused on her task that she doesn't notice someone else has entered the room. Not until Solo's deep, smoky voice cuts through Professor Yoda's whistling snores and the scrape of chalk against slate.

"You won't forget to build a house...?"

Ugh.

Cheeks flaming, she passes the eraser over a couple of runes before the entire string can be wiped clean again. "First knowing the improvements to two advanced potion recipes from memory and now translating ancient runes on sight," she says to the blackboard. "I'm starting to think you were the child prodigy, sir."

She dares to sneak a glance at him. Dressed in a dark three-piece suit and a tie that's more wine than Gryffindor red, he's leaning insouciantly against one side of the doorway, arms crossed. She feels sorry for his shirt buttons still fighting the good fight. She wants to eat him up.

He doesn't bother to respond to her quip. "It's lunch break," he says instead, sounding the tiniest bit annoyed. "Why is this old man making you write lines?"

Scandalized, Rey glances over her shoulder at Professor Yoda. But he continues to snooze on, an oblivious lump of brown robes in the back row.

"I forgot to do my homework," she mumbles, refocusing her attention on the board. She feels Solo's measured gaze on her and she's suddenly so self-conscious. The Ancient Runes classroom is replete with warming spells out of deference to Yoda's old bones, so she'd chucked off her black school robes and is standing there in her white blouse with a mustard stain on the collar, her gray skirt that's an inch too short due to a growth spurt over the summer, and her frayed knee socks that have seen better days.

"That's no reason to force you to skip a meal."

"I can assure you that Professor Yoda had zero malicious intentions." Rey flicks to the next page of the book that she'd spread out on the teacher's table as she searches for another usable rune. "He's a hundred and five years old. He's barely tethered to our time stream as it is."

Disapproval radiates from Solo in waves. She wishes he'd go away— she can't concentrate with him looking at her like that. And, now that he'd mentioned it, she's starting to feel a little hungry.

"You're translating too literally," he says after a while. "There was no concept of homework back when the system of runic writing was in place. Try something else."

"I have been. Learning didn't work, neither did task—"

"I suspect you used the rune for doing, which, when combined with the rune for task, changes the meaning to the hunting and gathering catch-all."

Rey frowns at the board.

She's not looking Solo's way, but she hears the smirk in his voice when he says, "You know I'm right, Miss Niima."

"Sorry, I'm fresh out of medals," she stiffly retorts.

He chuckles. It's the loveliest, warmest, sexiest sound she's ever heard, and she has to press her thighs together against the spark that lights up her core. It's with such a piercing regret that she wishes she'd been looking at him, after all. So that she could have seen him smile.

After consulting her book, Rey scribbles the runic for attend to my tasks on the board. She completes the sentence, and... it stays where it is. She writes it down four more times, then hurriedly packs her things and drapes her robes haphazardly over one arm, leaving the classroom without bothering to wake Professor Yoda.

To her utmost surprise, Solo falls into step beside her.

"I'm on my way out to see Chewbacca," he explains.

Are you two going hunting again? she nearly asks, before she remembers that he's not supposed to know she'd been in the Entrance Hall that night— and she can't tell him about the strange singing she'd heard coming from the Forbidden Forest, either, because she'd been breaking curfew that night, too.

So she blurts out, "Is your father all right now?"

Bollocks.

This man has really done something to her brain.

Fried it, perhaps.

Solo stops walking. He turns to her, white-faced, his dark eyes flashing with anger.

Rey takes a step back— not because she's scared, but because she's... something else. This is the first time she's gotten a peek at any emotion of his that runs deeper than wry humor or disdain, and it's so raw. So captivating.

Her spine hits the wall. Everyone else is at lunch; they're alone in the corridor.

It's visible, the way he forces his temper back down upon seeing her widen the distance between them. He must think she's afraid of him. Before she can even figure out how to correct this assertion, his cool, neutral mask slides into place.

"When I asked for your discretion, that was hardly an invite to snoop," he drawls.

"I was curious," Rey admits. She doesn't have any cards left to play but brutal honesty. "It was in the papers—"

"Why were you curious?" Solo demands. His tone is soft, but dangerously so. "That happened last year, so you must have searched for old issues. Why go through all that trouble?"

"I..." Rey trails off, then shuts up. Like she should have done from the very beginning.

Professor Solo stalks toward her, his fiery gaze glued to her face with an intent that's almost predatory. Her eyes drop to the floor but all of a sudden he's in her space, one large palm flat against the wall beside her head as he hunches over her, leaving her no choice but to look up. He's not cornering her, exactly— there's plenty of room for her to duck under his arm and get away if she wants to, but—

— but she doesn't want to. He's achingly near, surrounding her with his scent, his broad frame...

His presence.

"Well?" he prompts brusquely. "Why do you care so much?"

He's challenging her again. He wants her to back down from this strange game they've somehow ended up playing with each other. He's trying to intimidate her with his sheer physicality.

And the thing is, she is intimidated— but in a tremulous, moth-to-a-flame way that makes her want to continue being so. He's been closer to her than this in her dreams. He dwarfs her exactly the way she thought he would, and more. How can she even begin to think of fleeing when his generous lips look so soft as they move in the shape of his questions, when the column of his throat is as finely carved as ivory, when his hand is beside her head and it's practically as big as her head, fuck, how is that even acceptable—

"Answer me, Miss Niima."

The quiet authority in his tone hits her like a drug. There's an instinct that kicks in, but she doesn't know where it comes from. All she knows is that it's shy and fragile and she has to protect it with her life.

It's the instinct to do as he says. To please him.

To be good.

"I care because you sometimes look like you need someone to care," she whispers.

He sucks in a sharp intake of breath. Like she'd punched him in the gut. He all but jumps back as if she's caught fire and if he's not careful he'll end up burning with her, too. She's rooted to the spot, watching his hands ball into fists, watching his stern expression falter. Watching the twitch in the pale hollow underneath his eye and the slight tremble of his bottom lip.

It takes her a while to realize that what she's looking at is a man losing control.

"You shouldn't say things like that." Solo's voice is raspy and harsh, with a bitter edge.

"Or else what, sir?"

Rey can hardly believe she said that. She's not acting like herself. She doesn't recognize the person that she is now, alone in a hallway with her teacher and skirting terribly close to the forbidden.

A certain wildness.

And that's when Solo shows her he's not one to be messed around with, either.

"Or you'll end up doing something far more difficult to handle than writing lines on a blackboard," he—

— growls—

And Rey loses this fight.

She squeaks.

Out loud. Her fingers digging vainly into the stonework behind her for purchase.

Solo studies her flushed cheeks, her slowly scrabbling fingers, her ratty knee socks. His breathing is uneven at first but, eventually, it steadies. He retreats behind his walls.

Then he smirks at her, every inch a smug bastard. "He's fine, by the way."

"Wh— what?"

"My father? He's fully recovered now."

She gapes at him in disbelief, but it's not long before her eyes narrow in a glare. "Glad to hear it," she bites out.

For a brief moment, Solo's smirk threatens to widen into a full-fledged grin. He appears to catch himself at the last possible second, offering her a polite, perfectly composed nod instead. "See you on Friday," he says as he walks away.

Rey stares after him, dumbfounded. More than a little aroused. Her mind is a whirl but there is one sharp thought lodged into its center, blazing brighter and brighter as time ticks by in that quiet corridor, measured by the racing beat of her heart.

She vows revenge.

✨✨✨

"Tallie," Rey says later that night as she and the other girls are preparing for bed, "could you teach me how to do my hair?"

And Tallissan Lintra claps and squeals, like she's spent all her years at Hogwarts waiting for Rey to ask her that.