27. Chapter 27

Over the course of the next several days, Rey has—

— a belief-defying, mind-blowing, stupendous, quite possibly unconscionable amount of sex.

Tucked safely away in their cozy little hideout on the seventh floor of a sleepy, snow-blanketed castle that houses only a third of its usual population, with the nights so lazy and long and free, she and Ben experiment with enough different positions that she's able to compile a list of her top three favorite ones. The human body is weird and fascinating, really, in how an angle can mean the difference between a wonderful orgasm and one that leaves her unable to move or even think for literal minutes. Of course, all sex is good, but she especially likes it when she's on all fours and he's taking her from behind, and when she's riding him and slowly watching him come undone beneath her, and when she's on her back with her knees hooked over his shoulders as he all but folds her in half. She adores these positions because they make her feel so full of his stupidly big dick, so very stretched out beyond what she thought she was capable of.

There's a term for that. She's heard it bandied about by her schoolmates.

Size queen.

She admits as much to Ben one night, after they've collapsed onto the sheets and he's pulled out of her and they're lying side by side, panting and covered in sweat and staring up at the wooden ceiling. Her ears are still ringing pleasantly and she's much too blissed out and exhausted to guard her thoughts. "I think I'm a size queen," she says into the drowsy silence.

"Jesus—" Ben turns his head to muffle a surprised laugh into the round of her shoulder. It's not long before he's rolling onto his side, wrapping his brawny arms around her waist and curling around her, trailing languid kisses from her shoulder to her neck and then back again.

"What's your favorite, you know— position?" she asks, carding her fingers through his hair.

"Let's see..." He takes his time thinking about it, which she appreciates— and maybe she appreciates it even more because his lips don't stop lavishing attention on her flushed skin. "I would have to say that I don't have any strong preference, but anytime I can kiss you while we're fucking is always welcome."

Rey snorts, both embarrassed and delighted by such a response. "Oh, come off it."

"I'm serious," Ben mumbles into her neck. "I love kissing you."

He is such a... soft sort of man, she is starting to realize. And he can be a bit goofy, too— he'd grinned from ear to ear when she'd given him the paisley socks and solemnly sworn that he would never take them off, and he'd chucked her under the chin when she wrinkled her nose at the thought. He hides it behind a stern facade but, in private, in firelight, he makes her feel so utterly adored.

They do their fair share of talking as well. Early one morning, while they're drinking hot chocolate by the fire before sneaking back to their respective dorms, she asks him how Chewie and Obi-Wan and Han and Leia had all come to know one another, and what follows is quite possibly the most entertaining story she's ever heard. Back in the latter half of the seventies, a dark wizard by the name of Sheev Palpatine had terrorized the Pacific Northwest with his pet dragon, a Hungarian Horntail he called Deathstar. It was an international incident, owing to the fact that Palpatine was from Svalbard and a graduate of Durmstrang Institute. Obi-Wan and Chewie had been on the team assembled to neutralize him, owing to the former's experience battling dark wizards and the latter's skill at handling dragons, while Leia— who'd still been with the International Confederation at the time— had been sent to mediate between MACUSA and the Norwegian ministry. The conflict had lasted for the better part of a month and encompassed Idaho, Oregon, and Washington and spilled over into the Canadian border, which had proved even more of a diplomatic headache for Leia.

Han had gotten involved simply because he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. "As usual," Ben grunts, making a face that leaves Rey no choice but to snuggle into his side from how wryly hilarious and adorable she finds it. "But the one who really saved the day was Uncle Luke— my mom's twin brother," Ben continues, draping an arm over Rey's shoulders. "He was a MACUSA Auror at the time and, after the dragon had been knocked out and Palpatine had disarmed Obi-Wan, he stepped in and dueled Palpatine, managing to incapacitate him so that he could be taken back to Europe and locked up in Nurmengard."

"I didn't know your mum had a twin," Rey says. "Why didn't he visit you this Christmas as well?"

"Uncle Luke," Ben sighs, "is a hippie. He retired early to travel the world and he doesn't get in touch often. Last we heard from him, he was in Australia. Probably spends his days getting high off of billywig stings in the outback."

Rey giggles. Ben blinks, like he can't believe he made her laugh, and then he disguises his tiny, somewhat bashful smile by taking another sip from his cup of hot chocolate.

On New Year's Eve, Rey makes an early exit from the party in the common room, feigning a headache, and she rings in midnight with Ben, her head pillowed on his bare chest as he holds her close while they watch the fireworks through the log cabin's lone window. She breathes in his scent as smoke and colors explode before her eyes, and she thinks that maybe this can be a good year.

Maybe it can be the best she's ever had.

In the early morning on the fifth of January, the frosted-over castle grounds are once again a flurry of noise and life as the other students return from vacation. Rey's already waiting in the front hall when Finn and Rose rush in and envelop her in joyful hugs, the three of them for a moment standing as still as boulders in the fast-moving stream of people etched in winter light.

"Rumor has it that Tallie and Keyan broke up over the holidays," Finn divulges to Rey in a stage whisper. "They walked right past each other at King's Cross and they didn't sit in the same compartment on the way here."

Rose lightly smacks her boyfriend on the arm. "You're such a gossip." She then turns to Rey, her expression suddenly dead serious. "But it's true. Jysella told me that she saw them at the Leaky Cauldron on December twenty-ninth and Keyan was all red in the face like he was about to cry—"

"Here she comes!" Finn hisses, and Rose immediately clamps her lips tightly together as Tallie strides in through the entryway with Jess and Kaydel.

To Rey's very great surprise, Tallie flutters over to her and does... that thing where you pretend to kiss someone on both cheeks but turn your head before any actual contact is made. "Eurydice! I do hope your holidays weren't too boring!"

"Er— they were all right." Rey tries to look and sound as blank as possible. "How were yours?"

"I think I made some good decisions about certain things, and now I'm looking forward to seeing what this year has in store for me," the blonde girl loftily declares, and Rey has to smile at just how unstoppable Tallissan Lintra is.

Rey spends the rest of the morning on a bench in the courtyard, catching up with Finn and Rose, who are full of stories about their respective vacations. As for herself, Rey can only share the awkward meeting with Professor Solo's parents in Hogsmeade and the G-rated version of the epidemic of Zonko's hats, the charms on which had finally faded shortly before New Year's Eve— but the way Finn and Rose react, it's as if she's gone on the grandest adventure of them all. She really has missed her friends, and—

— and the absolute worst thing happens when Gandris and his friends pass by and he amiably asks Finn and Rose if they've seen Rey's new broomstick yet.

"No, but we're getting to that," Finn assures Gandris, and— once the latter and his crew have left, Rey fidgets uneasily at being the object of two piercing stares.

"A Firebolt Supreme?" Rose barks.

"Yes, I won it in a contest." Rey's been practicing this line for days, but there'd been a part of her that had been hoping it wouldn't get brought up. An extremely naive part, in hindsight. "Back in October, I found a Quidditch magazine in the library—"

"Which Quidditch magazine?" Finn interrupts.

"The Doubtful Bludger, it's from New Zealand, you wouldn't have heard of it," Rey tells him with an air of challenge. The magazine exists, but of course there had been no such contest; however, she doubts Finn is an avid subscriber as she doesn't even think he knows which ball is which in the game, and the risk she's taking appears to pay off when he raises his palms in surrender. "Anyway, I wrote to them with a short essay on what Quidditch means to me—"

"An essay?" Finn interrupts again, sounding even more dubious.

"Oi, I can write when it's something I'm passionate about!" Rey snaps, offended on her nonexistent Quidditch essay's behalf. "And I won, didn't I, they sent me the first prize and everything—"

Finn and Rose exchange glances. "Well, congratulations," Rose finally says, reaching over and squeezing Rey's hand. "Don't listen to Finn Llewellyn over here. You deserve that broomstick."

"I mean, you do, Rey, you're brilliant," Finn says apologetically, and Rey feels like she's the most horrible person who ever lived. "But why didn't you tell us?"

Rey looks down at the ground. "I thought it would be too embarrassing if I told anyone I'd joined and I didn't win."

Finn and Rose comfort and reassure her and congratulate her again, but things don't go back to normal. On the surface, they do— however, Rey carries the guilt like a mouthful of thorns all throughout the rest of the day. She and Ben had spent an amazing couple of weeks together, but now reality is seeping back in.

They have to start being careful again.

And she has to develop a thicker skin about lying to her friends.

Rey doesn't sneak out of Gryffindor Tower that night. Ben had insisted that she needed to get all the rest that she could for tomorrow, the first day of school of the new calendar year. He'd muttered something about readjusting her body clock now that winter break is over, and in a way she does appreciate being ever so sternly cared for like this— but she goes to bed frustrated both sexually and with the general situation, and when she wakes up in the morning it is much the same.

Her malaise lasts all throughout that entire first week of classes and the next, exacerbated by the workload that is unceremoniously dumped on her and the other seventh years. "Word is that the teachers are panicking because we didn't do so well in our exams last December," Doran Sarkin-Tainer confides in hushed tones over lunch. "They think that there's a good chance most of us will make a complete muck of the N.E.W.T.s if they don't step it up."

"Good on them for caring, I guess, but two hundred questions on one single bit of Charms homework? Charms?" Jess wails, aggrieved. "That's so much!"

It really is so much. And, on top of Jannah insisting that her team observe Ravenclaw and Slytherin as the two houses practice for their match in February, Rey barely has time to breathe, let alone see Ben outside of class.

And, speaking of Ben and his class... well. She's got a bone to pick with him because of that, too.

In Defense Against the Dark Arts, they've started the phase of the curriculum that deals with wandless magic. "It's a useful little trick if you get disarmed— and, hopefully, one that your opponent won't see coming," Ben says, leaning against the front of the teacher's desk with one hand in his pocket as usual. "I'm not expecting any miracles here. Those trained in the European style of magic generally find this difficult, close to impossible. Not even Headmaster Kenobi can perform a complex spell without some sort of conduit. However, at the end of this month, you should at the very least be able to summon your wand into your palm across a short distance."

A series of uneasy murmuring flickers through the room. Rey looks around; some of her classmates are shaking their heads and some are conferring tensely with one another, while others are looking at Ben as if he's just told them that their next practical exam will involve underwater combat versus the Giant Squid.

Ben is clearly less than pleased by the reactions. "You are in this N.E.W.T.-level class because you dream of becoming Aurors, Curse-Breakers, and various other professions that require quick thinking and resourcefulness when facing the more dangerous elements of the wizarding world," he reminds them. "The ability to call your wand to your person can mean the difference between life and death in a situation where you are dealing with a dark wizard or artifact. If you don't want to even try coaxing your wits and your magic towards the pinnacle of what they can achieve, then I have no choice but to recommend that you switch career tracks."

Brrr, Rey thinks. She had forgotten how much of a bastard Ben can be in the classroom. Seeing him like this, it's almost as though he's a stranger to her. It's yet another blow to the rapidly deflating happy little bubble that she'd immersed herself in during the holidays.

He demonstrates summoning his blackthorn wand into his grasp, much to the amazement of her classmates. He's very careful not to so much as glance in her direction; they're the only two people in this room who know that she's already seen him do such a thing, right before tracing a contraceptive charm on the plane of her stomach. Her mouth goes dry at the memory of his intricate spellwork sinking into her bare skin.

But all thoughts of sex— or, indeed, anything good in the world— are quick to dissipate, because it turns out to be the most exasperating lesson that she's ever had within the halls of Hogwarts.

Ben instructs them to place their wands on top of their desks and hold an open palm several inches in the air above it while trying to cast Accio. "Roughly the same principle as nonverbal, but with a lot more concentration," he explains. "Bear in mind that your magic doesn't come from your wand. You are the source."

Rey is getting flashbacks to her first Flying lesson, she and a bunch of other kids whose names she could barely keep straight moving like awkward ducklings as they arrange themselves into rows on the pitch, Professor Dameron telling them to step to the left side of their broom and say, Up! Her broom had flown into her hand at once, and Dameron had grinned broadly as he declared that she might be a natural talent.

He'd stopped grinning a while later, when her very first flight had ended with her almost crashing into him and veering away at the last moment only to end up whacking him over the head with the broom handle hard enough to knock him out. Thus setting the stage for their seven-year feud.

Unlike that day, though, her wand is currently refusing to gravitate to her palm. Even after several tries— even when she's focusing so hard that she's pretty sure she looks constipated— it just won't budge.

After an hour has passed with no progress from anyone, Ben's perennial frown deepens. Then he gets a certain gleam in his eye that causes Rey to have to stifle a groan because that gleam has never signified anything good.

"Most instances of accidental wandless magic happen in early childhood and there are innumerable cases when that magic kicked in to save its wielder from harm," he says.

Rey nods along with several other students. There had been one afternoon when she was nine years old and an aggressive dog had chased her on the way home from the grocer's. Its jaws had closed around her leg and she'd been screaming, waiting for the pain, but it never came— the dog's fangs had vanished, and it had been just as confused as she was, allowing her to scurry away unscathed.

Back then, she'd chalked it up to yet another one of those weird occurrences that always happened around her for some reason.

"Let's see if we can try to jumpstart that self-preservation instinct," Ben says. "For the remainder of the period, you and your partner from our dueling course will take turns firing hexes at each other— with the caveat that the target's wand will be on the floor and they have to summon it in order to deflect the attack. Needless to say," he continues dryly as the class groans in abject despair, "we will stick to mild hexes for this lesson."

And that is the story behind the seventh-year D.A.D.A. students trooping out of the room at the end of the period, each one sporting injuries and deformities that range from minor burns to bruises to grossly elongated front teeth to electric-shocked hair to green warts to antlers to tails. Rey has such a bad case of Twitchy Ears that she has to clamp her hands over them as she walks.

"I can cancel some of those hexes if you like," Ben offers, glancing at the miserable contingent filing out of the door as he magically arranges the desks back into their proper positions. "I'm not exactly a healer, but..."

A jolt runs through the students and they quicken their pace, and pretty soon Rey is the only one of her peers left inside the room, bringing up the rear. She'd let Finn and Rose scamper on ahead to the hospital wing, as Rose had vanished Finn's nose and they were both in a panic.

"Miss Niima, let me take care of that for you," Ben calls out. "No sense overloading Madame Kalonia any more than necessary."

She changes course, stiffly marching over to him. He motions for her to take a seat in the front row, facing the aisle, and she complies, her ears spasming against the sides of her head in a way that makes her grit her teeth. As the sound of the last of the footsteps in the corridor fade away, he flicks his blackthorn wand at the door; only once it has creaked shut does he kneel on the floor beside her, gently wrapping the fingers of his free hand around her left wrist and coaxing her to lower her arm so that he can inspect the aftermath of Seff's rather prodigious spellwork.

He is so close to her.

Ben cancels the hex on her left ear, and then the right. Afterwards, he doesn't immediately get to his feet. He pockets his wand and stays where he is, his hands idly rubbing up and down her arms in long, slow strokes.

"Hi." He sounds... tired. And a little bewildered. He sounds exactly the way she feels after a week of so much work and being stressed over their situation. He's back in one of his suits and she's in her school uniform and it's another stolen moment that can't be allowed to go on for too long. She just wants it to be that last week of December again, or maybe that first little piece of January.

"Hi," she echoes in what is barely above a whisper.

Ben reaches out to tuck a stray lock of Rey's hair behind her now thankfully not-twitching ear. "How's your week going?"

"Do you mean before or after my ears started dancing the Macarena thanks to some tosser?" she shoots back.

"Now, now, Miss Niima, there's no need to call Mr. Hellin names," Ben drawls.

"I— I meant you!" Rey sputters.

He smirks. His hand darts to the topmost button of her blouse, fingertips skating across her collarbone along the way. "Do you have some time?"

She's so tempted. She's shivering at his touch. But...

"Finn and Rose might come looking for me when they get out of the hospital wing," Rey says. "I'd like to play it safe for now. They're already a tad suspicious because of my new broomstick."

"Shit." Ben goes pale. "I didn't even think about that. What did you tell them?"

"That I won it in a contest—"

"A... contest?" He blinks. "What kind of contest?"

"An essay writing contest for The Doubtful Bludger," she mumbles. "It's a Quidditch magazine from New Zealand. I told them I found it in the library."

The silence that ensues is very, very long. Ben is staring at her with something like horror written all over his features, and Rey feels more and more stupid with each second that ticks by.

"What if they look for the magazine?" he finally asks.

"They won't. They don't care about Quidditch."

"What if they happen to mention it to someone who does care, and who also wants to check if there are more contests of this nature?"

His line of questioning, couched as it is in a patient tone, only serves to heighten the anxiety that she's been feeling these past few days. She scrambles to her feet, snarling, "Well, you probably should've been the one to come up with a believable excuse before buying me the wizarding equivalent of a sports car that everyone in this school knows I can't bloody afford!"

Ben stands up as well, his brow furrowing at her outburst. "Rey," he starts to say— but she's already stomping out of the classroom, humiliated, worried, tired.

He doesn't chase after her. He can't, even if he wants to, because someone might see. And that only makes her feel even worse.

✨✨✨

Rey's mood is far from improved when another week of school rolls around and is just as grueling as the previous one. It gets to the point that she seriously contemplates dropping out of Arithmancy, a subject she loves, just so she can get more than four hours of sleep per day. In addition to attending lectures morning and afternoon, producing scroll after scroll of homework every night, and practicing charms, Transfiguration spells, and wandless magic in their free time, she and the other N.E.W.T.-level Potions students also have a list of ingredients that they need to gather from the school grounds for the Friday brewing— and foraging is messy and complicated, and it eats up so many hours.

"Hux is such a wanker," Finn complains on Thursday evening as he and Rey and the other Gryffindors are up to their elbows in snow and mud, methodically unearthing a patch of aconite growing near the shores of the Black Lake. They have to be extra careful to not inflict any damage on the plant's fragile roots. "Foraging is a necessary skill that every potioneer worth their salt must excel at," he mimics the redheaded professor's cold, nasal drawl. "He literally looks like the British Empire. Bet he's never had to forage for anything his whole life."

Rey doesn't even have the strength to voice her agreement, as she's just finished translating fifteen pages for Ancient Runes, with fifteen more to go.

So far, January is turning out to be a really bad month. And she hasn't gotten laid in ages.

Not that she even thinks it's a sure thing that she will in the near future. She hasn't seen Ben since she walked out on him last week.

When she and the rest of the students enter his classroom the next morning, he looks just as cranky as she feels. "After our dismal session last Friday, I hope you've all been practicing," he says once everyone is seated. Not even once glancing at her. "Today you will come to the front one by one, leaving your wand at your desk, and you will attempt to summon it.

"We're all doomed," Rey overhears Tallie muttering to Jess. Among the Gryffindors, only Doran has managed to get his wand to come to him after a good hour spent swearing at it, and that was on the tail-end of a week's worth of practice. And he's the Head Boy.

"I will be calling out names at random," Ben announces. "Let's start with Miss Tico."

After five minutes, Rose is unable to summon her wand. Same with pretty much everyone who is called after her. With each failed attempt, Ben's scowl deepens and his tone grows even more clipped, and Rey's temper— which already hadn't been in the best shape to begin with— rises and rises.

He'd told them that even accomplished wizards had a hard time with wandless magic. Why is he expecting them to be able to pull it off when they haven't even graduated yet?

There is a distant, tiny part of Rey that understands that she's being hypocritical. She'd told Leia that Ben is a good teacher because he pushes them to be at their best. This new lesson is him pushing them to be at their best as well— however, she's not in the mood to be logical. The frustrations of the past two weeks are building up inside her, demanding to be expressed.

"Miss Niima," Ben calls out, his features even more impassive than usual. Merlin, she'd give anything to faze him at this point.

With all eyes fixed on her, Rey goes up to the front of the room, standing a few feet away from Ben. She extends a hand towards her desk and tries to focus, tries to coax magic out of her fingertips and pull her wand to her being. But her thoughts are a muddled haze and she feels like she hasn't slept in years and she doesn't know how to deal with the fallout of the argument that she'd had with him last Friday and—

"You're not centering yourself," Ben admonishes. "Did you even practice at all?"

He has the gall to sound slightly disappointed in her.

"Give me a minute, will you?" Rey says hotly, glaring at him. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Finn and Rose press their hands over their mouths in shock. "You're not our only teacher and we've all been hanging by a thread since classes started back up. We are trying here. Cut us some slack."

The room goes as silent as the grave.

A muscle works in Ben's jaw.

She will give him this— he appears to be processing her words despite the sharp way she'd uttered them. He glances at the haggard faces of the other students and then turns back to her. "Very well. I'll take this into consideration," he says curtly. "But, while I may not be your only teacher, I am still your teacher, and I will not be talked to like that again. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she grunts.

His Occlumency cracks and, for a split second, she glimpses his annoyance with her, his temper rising. "'Yes, sir,'" he acidly corrects.

And that's when Rey hits her breaking point. "There's no need to call me sir, professor."

Her classmates gasp.

Ben's dark eyes gleam dangerously. "Detention, Miss Niima," he says in a quiet tone that is nevertheless firm enough to let her know that she's in for it. "My office. Tonight at seven."