38. Chapter 38

“We know something,” Tallie sings out the moment Rey walks into their shared dorm room later that night.

Tallie’s sitting on Jessika’s bed, the two of them in their pajamas and their hair in rollers amidst a scattering of magazines. They both look at Rey with wide grins that threaten to split their faces.

Rey stops cold. Her heart literally doesn’t beat for several whole seconds. She eyes the other girls warily. “What is it?”

“A little bird told us that you were talking to Aleson Gray outside the D.A.D.A. classroom earlier,” Jess says. “And by little bird, I mean Kaydel’s roommate’s younger sister, who’s in second year and saw the two of you on her way out.”

Rey almost faints from sheer relief, but she manages to very nonchalantly walk over to her little corner of their living quarters instead, tossing her book bag onto her desk and shrugging out of her black school robes. “Aleson and I did have a little chat, yes.”

Tallie and Jess squeal like a couple of nifflers who’ve found buried treasure. Rey struggles not to roll her eyes as she gathers her own pajamas into her arms along with a fresh pair of knickers, a towel, and her basket of toiletries.

“Rey, he’s so fit!” Tallie gushes. “I think that it would be a great match!”

“That’s not—it wasn’t like that—” Rey sputters. Merlin, if Ben were privy to this discussion… “We were just making small talk—casual, y’know, in passing—”

“Aleson Gray doesn’t talk to just anyone,” Jess informs her seriously. “He’s a right snob, he is.”

“So, for a right snob to strike up a conversation with someone who’s not in his house,” Tallie continues, “someone he’s never really interacted with before—”

“It means he fancies you, Rey!” Jess all but shrieks, and she and Tallie burst into giggles, clapping their hands and bouncing on the mattress.

“I highly doubt that,” Rey tells them with feeling. “He’s pureblood, isn’t he? The traditional sort, yeah?”

Tallie nods. “The Grays are one of the oldest wizarding families in Europe. One of the richest, too. But they aren’t, like, obsessed with blood purity, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s got an aunt in werewolf rights.”

“Even so,” Rey scoffs, “I’m hardly his type. Not exactly a debutante now, am I?”

“But, Rey, you’re so pretty,” Jess says, much to Rey’s disbelief. “You’ve always been pretty, but especially this school year. Isn’t that right, Tallissan?”

Tallie nods with such enthusiasm that for a moment Rey worries that her head will snap right off. “You’ve really come into your own over the last several months. You’re so much more—I don’t know, present. Confident.”

“With a certain air of mystery,” Jess adds, and she and Tallie giggle again. “Blokes go absolutely nuts for that.”

Of course I have an air of mystery, snipes Rey’s cynical inner voice. I’m keeping the biggest, most life-ruining secret of my entire… well, life.

She suddenly can’t get out of that room fast enough. She flees the scene to the sound of Jess and Tallie’s protests, and on her way to the showers she bumps into Jannah.

“Hullo, Niima!” Jannah bellows out. The Gryffindor team captain has recently changed her managerial style from murderously frenzied to frighteningly upbeat, and Rey can’t decide which is worse. “Capital evening, innit? Sleep early because we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow! Quidditch practice from 3 P.M. until sundown! Every day of this coming week except Friday! Friday is rest day because our final match is on Saturday!”

“Noted,” Rey says. “Er, Jannah, are you quite all right--?”

“I am completely fine! Aren’t you fine!” Jannah barks. “D’you know why I’m fine? D’you know what we’re going to do?”

“Calm ourselves?” Rey suggests.

“No.” Jannah thumps her on the back. “We’re going to beat Ravenclaw by two hundred points in glorious battle and win the Quidditch Cup! It’s all riding on you, Niima. That means you have to be in tiptop shape, d’you hear? Early to bed and early to rise all week, do not skip a single meal but avoid fat, no sex—”

Rey’s heart skips several beats for the second time that night. “I beg your pardon—”

“Oh, that’s just in general. Like—if you ever want to, don’t. I’m telling all the players that.” Jannah pats Rey on the arm. “I know you don’t have sex.”

Despite herself, Rey can’t help feeling a little offended. She has to bite her tongue to refrain from saying to Jannah that, on the contrary, she does have sex.

Boatloads of it, as a matter of fact.

After a while, Rey’s able to escape from Jannah and disappear into the safety of the showers. She stands nude under the hot spray, her eyes closed against the steam, feeling the water run through her hair and over her bare skin, listening to the sound that water makes as it patters on the tiles and gurgles down the drain.

Taking a deep breath, Rey slowly and carefully removes the plug that she’d been furtively squirming against all afternoon. She shivers a little, her ass pleasantly sore as Ben’s come drips out of it, soon washed away by the running water.

✨✨✨

“What do you mean I can’t fuck you?” Ben growls, low in Rey’s ear.

It’s Tuesday and she’d dropped by his office after Study of Ancient Runes. At first, Rey had been thinking that they could just hang out for a bit, but it soon became clear that Ben had other plans. He’d pounced on her the moment the door swung shut. He hadn’t stopped kissing her while he nonverbally cast the usual privacy spells. And she hadn’t remembered to tell him that sex was out of the question until they’d collapsed on the couch like this—her leaning against the cushions with her skirt rucked up her thighs, Ben’s hips settled between her spread legs as he kisses her neck.

Or, well, he’d been kissing her neck. Now he’s just staring down at her with his dark eyes burning, pupils blown wide by lust. He looks slightly crazed, like what they’d done last week has unlocked something primal in him.

Something intensely, fiercely possessive.

“It’s not allowed.” She runs her fingers through his hair. His eyes flutter shut and he leans into her touch even as he makes a rumbly, discontented noise in the back of his throat. “The match against Ravenclaw is on Saturday. Jannah wants us players to save our energy and sort of, y’know, build up aggression—”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Ben acknowledges even as he pouts. “But the question is—is it working?”

Rey laughs. “I’m not sure.”

As the week progresses, though, Rey comes to surmise that it is, in fact, working. With no other outlet but Quidditch practice, the Gryffindor team is in fighting form.

However—

Well.

It’s not as though she and Ben have regularly been having daily sex. Only the holidays had afforded them that opportunity. A week is not the longest that Rey has gone without ever since she and Ben started shagging, either. It’s totally doable.

But the fact that she can’t have sex if she wants to—it eats away at her. There’s an old saying about that, isn’t there, about forbidden fruit tasting the sweetest…

The thing is, Jannah will never even find out if Rey dips her wick—or maybe gets dipped by Ben’s wick would be more accurate—but Rey’s determined to give her best to this final match, still smarting from her failure in the previous one. This means that, when she walks into Ben’s class on Friday morning, she’s just about ready to jump his bones on the spot. And the moment that he looks up from rolls of parchment and catches sight of her, she can practically see his Occlumency walls slamming into place.

One more day, she tells herself as he proceeds with his lecture and the sound of his voice has her squeezing her thighs together under her desk. I can hold out for one more day.

But she still sneaks into his office later that afternoon, probably because she’s never made a good decision ever in her life.

It’s a small mercy that Ben has far more self-control than she does. They snog on the couch but that’s it. He holds her and promises her that he’ll be cheering her on from the stands the next day. He tells her that she’s going to be amazing out on the pitch, and she snuggles into his warmth and his strength and she lets herself believe it. Things like this are so much easier to believe now, and maybe Tallie had been right and she is more confident this year, with Ben drawing her out of her shell and staying beside her every step of the way.

She loves him so much. And, when he tucks her hair behind her ear and peers down at her with that crooked little grin, she immediately decides that she’s going to tell him.

Tomorrow. After the match. Come what may.

✨✨✨

Game day is sunny, but not unbearably so. The heavens are clear and there is a lively breeze.

Rey had barely eaten during breakfast, despite Finn’s best efforts to ply her with sausages and toast. She’s so nervous that she feels as though she’ll throw up at any moment. Dressed in full Quidditch regalia, her knuckles clench to white around her broomstick as she waits, along with her teammates, to enter the field.

Jannah calls them together for one last huddle. “All right, listen up, you lot! This is the last match of the season and we are going to win it—even if we have to cover that pitch in the blood of our enemies!”

“Merlin,” Jess mutters from her place beside Rey.

“I know that Ravenclaw is a formidable opponent,” Jannah continues, ignoring Jess, “but we have been training and we are prepared to take them on! That is my vow to you! Niima needs us to be ahead by fifty points before she can catch the Snitch and we will give her that lead! And also—”

Jannah hesitates, blinking furiously. To Rey’s horror, she spies tears welling up in the other girl’s dark eyes. The rest of the team freezes, unsure what to do.

“And also,” Jannah says thickly, “this is the last speech that I’ll get to give as your captain, and for me and the other seventh years, today is the last day that we’ll get to go out there and play for Gryffindor. So I just want to take this opportunity to say that—” She sniffs, visibly struggling to muster a watery smile—“that, every single time I’ve led you all into battle, it’s always been my honor, and—and—you lot have been the best team ever. Every single one of you gave me everything you had—”

Jannah bites down on her lower lip, as if she’s too overcome with emotion to keep on speaking. The atmosphere within their huddle has abruptly shifted. There’s not a dry eye left. Rey’s throat is clogged up and her teammates are blurry.

It’s Tharandon, one of the Beaters who’s in sixth year, who bursts into outright sobs. “We’re going to miss you so much, captain!” he wails, and the younger players nod their assent. He raises his bat in the air, tears running down his cheeks. “I’ll crush their bones to dust for you today! I swear I will!”

This makes Jannah cry even harder. The Gryffindor team marches out onto the pitch with all of them blubbering.

The roar of the crowd is even more deafening than usual. The stands are packed, glinting with banners in either blue and bronze or scarlet and gold. Rey blinks in the sunlight and takes it all in, gripped by the enormity of this being her last ever Quidditch game at Hogwarts. The very last.

She sees Finn and Rose sitting together with the other Gryffindors, cheering up a storm. She grins at them, and it’s a grin that widens when her gaze drifts up to the faculty area of the stands and Ben is there, between Obi-Wan and Chewie.

He’s wearing a brown suede jacket over a pale gray cable-knit sweater. Neutral hues, just like all the other professors save for Mon Mothma and Wildis Jiklip, who are in Gryffindor and Ravenclaw-colored robes, respectively. And, in truth, Ben looks more than a teensy bit bewildered by—well, everything, but he’s applauding good-naturedly and even from this distance it’s apparent to Rey that his dark eyes are fixed on her and there’s a slight smile on his face and that’s more than enough.

The two opposing teams meet in the middle of the pitch. It’s fairly obvious that the Ravenclaws have also been crying, and Professor Dameron seems suspiciously misty-eyed as well. He regards each one of the seventh-year players—even Rey—with a hint of wistfulness.

“I’ll miss having you lot on my pitch,” he says. “Granted, some less than others. Let’s make this match one to remember, yeah?”

Jannah shakes hands with Kazuda Xiono, the Ravenclaw captain. Elliver slips his boyfriend a wink over Jannah’s shoulder, Kazuda smirks back, and Jannah—with unerring sixth sense—whirls around to glare at Elliver. “No fraternizin’ with the enemy!”

“Definitely some less than others,” Poe grunts, not so quite under his breath, as the players assume their positions, hovering a few feet off of the ground around him. He kicks open the wooden chest that houses the Quidditch balls and the two Bludgers and the Golden Snitch go zipping away. Finally, the Quaffle shoots up into the air, and Poe blows his whistle. The players scramble and the crowd roars and Rey goes higher, her broom taking to the sunlit sky.

✨✨✨

“I very sincerely hope that you won’t do anything foolish this match,” Ben had told Rey when she dropped by his office the previous afternoon.

She hadn’t promised that she wouldn’t. She’d just kissed him as a distraction—one that had worked out quite well. And now, watching the game unfold below her, she concludes that she really couldn’t have promised him anything of the sort.

She wants to win the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup. She wants that unblemished seven-year streak for Gryffindor. She will do anything.

Maybe she won’t necessarily prioritize saving a broomstick over her own life again, but she will execute a dangerous maneuver if she has to, if it means that she can catch the Snitch. Ben will just have to deal.

He can always spank her for it later, anyway.

No, Rey tells herself sternly as she feels her face grow hot. You cannot think about Professor Solo spanking you. You have to focus.

The Ravenclaw Chasers have the Quaffle. The three of them are flying together in an arrowhead toward the opposition goalposts, blue robes streaming in the wind. It’s the same intimidating formation that had allowed them to bulldoze their way through the Hufflepuff and Slytherin ranks, but the Gryffindors have been studying.

Tharandon bats a Bludger in a downward arc at one of the Ravenclaw Chasers, who swerves to avoid it, the other two swerving with him, maintaining their formation. But Elliver suddenly rears up in front of them, swinging the second Bludger at the lead Chaser at the same time that Tharandon’s bat reconnects with the first Bludger from below.

The Ravenclaw Chasers scatter, the Quaffle slipping away in the chaos, and Jess Pava comes swooping in and flicks it with the tail of her broom. The red leather ball goes soaring past the Ravenclaw Keeper and through the hoop, and the Gryffindor portion of the stands bursts into cheers.

One, Rey thinks, leaning slightly forward on her own broomstick.

Four more goals and then she can catch the Snitch.

But Ravenclaw rallies, and the two teams are tied at twenty points apiece—increasing the number of goals that Rey needs to achieve that final two-hundred-point lead—when a familiar glint of golden wings flickers into view. Rey locks eyes with Natua Wan, the Ravenclaw Seeker who’s a few feet away.

Neither of them moves a muscle.

This is the last match, and Ravenclaw also has a set number of points that they need in order to win the Cup. The current ranking has them tied with Slytherin in first place.

“NIIMA AND WAN BOTH DEFER THE SNITCH!” the match commentator, an eager fifth-year Hufflepuff, booms from the stands. “OH, THIS IS EXCITING—WAIT—IS HE GOING TO—YES, FRY SCORES!” Rey looks down and sees her teammate pump a fist in the air. “TEN POINTS FOR GRYFFINDOR! GRYFFINDOR IN THE LEAD!”

Rey grips the handle of the Firebolt Supreme tighter.

Gryffindor is in fighting form today, but so is Ravenclaw. The energy practically crackles off of the pitch.

When Ravenclaw scores its third goal, Natua subtly shifts into a more alert posture, a satisfied gleam in her green eyes, and Rey realizes that the other Seeker’s team has met its threshold number of points. Natua’s ready to catch the Snitch.

And that’s precisely when the Snitch appears again.

Rey’s mind is racing a mile a minute along with her heartbeat. She’s pretty sure that her pupils are dilated. Sweat coats her hands, coats the inner lining of her gloves. Fuck, is this what it feels like to have a panic attack, she should just make a dive for it, catch it, this is her last Quidditch match at Hogwarts and she is a Seeker and she can’t just let the Snitch go—

Focus. She has to focus.

Rey takes a deep breath, her Occlumency walls sliding into place. She zips open her luggage and she packs away the fear and the anxiety and the tension, just like Ben had taught her to. She watches almost dispassionately as Natua tears off in pursuit of the fluttering golden ball, the crowd going mad.

Believe in my team, Rey chants to herself. I will believe in my team.

“CRUSH THEIR BONES TO DUST!” Tharandon screams, a wild light in his eyes.

And he swings a Bludger with manic precision and unbelievable force in Jess’ direction, and Jess dodges it by slanting her body to the side so that she’s hanging on to her broom by the strength of her thighs alone, and the Bludger careens toward Natua, who has no choice but to spin in order to avoid it. The Snitch flits away and disappears once more into the clouds.

The audience explodes.

It’s Jannah’s patented move that they’ve been practicing for months. Putting the Chasers in the line of fire so that the opposing team will think that they’re safe.

“You’re my man, Tharandon!” Jannah bellows from her place in front of the goalposts. Even at this distance, Rey can see that her captain is sobbing. “You’re my number one!”

“Oi, what am I, then, chopped liver?” Jess grumbles as she rights herself. Looking toward the stands, Rey spies Kaydel on her feet, her fingernails gouging into her cheeks from sheer terror.

Merlin, Quidditch really is such a dangerous game.

Newly energized, the Gryffindor team plays with a fresh burst of determination. Jess, Dyun, and Fry score more goals in quick succession and Jannah blocks all of the Ravenclaw attempts like her life depends on it. It’s something of a bloodbath, to be perfectly honest, and it’s only because of her Occlumency that Rey manages to stay serene above the fray.

Finally, Gryffindor pulls ahead by fifty points and they maintain that lead, and after a couple more successful saves by Jannah, Rey is squinting down at the chaos and her gaze is landing on fluttering gold just above the emerald grass.

She dives.

“NIIMA’S OFF!” the Hufflepuff commentator screeches over the frenzied roar of the audience. “WAN’S ON HER TAIL AND GAINING—HERE WE GO—IT’S DO OR DIE!”

The wind whips at Rey’s face. She weaves amidst the Chasers and she dodges one Bludger after another. Her teammates are screaming, egging her on, let’s go, Rey, let’s go, and the Firebolt Supreme is screeching in protest as she pushes it to its speed limit—

—then she’s parallel to the ground, her hand outstretched, the Snitch inches away—

A shadow falls over her. Rey glances up to see Natua descending in a whirl of blue and bronze, grasping for the Snitch as well. The Snitch chooses that exact moment to dart upwards, and at this rate and given the angle, Natua will catch it before Rey does—

Gritting her teeth, Rey clambers to her feet, balancing herself on the Firebolt Supreme’s handle as it zooms through the grass. There are gasps and shouts but they might as well have come from another world. She lurches forward, shoving Natua’s hand out of the way, and then—

—then Rey tips over, rolling onto the grass—

More gasps, more shouts, the Hufflepuff commentator chattering away about how Niima’s down and the Snitch is nowhere to be found—

Rey forces herself to her bruised knees, her joints aching. The other players are frozen above her. She feels something fluttery and metallic trying to fight its way out of her mouth, sharp things poking at the back of her throat, and she gags—

And, with practically all of Hogwarts watching, Rey spits out the Golden Snitch. It lands in her cupped palms, shiny with saliva.

She stares at it in disbelief.

Once everyone realizes what just happened, the noise that blossoms on the Quidditch pitch would not have been dissimilar to the Rapture.

As one, Rey’s teammates converge upon her, jumping off of their brooms and tackling her back onto the grass. They all have tears in their eyes and so does she. She can barely hear the commentator’s declaration of a Gryffindor victory over the raucous cheers and boos of the audience and the thunder of red-robed supporters flocking down from the stands to the pitch.

The next few minutes are a blur as Gryffindor House hoists their team onto their shoulders. Rey is beaming fit to burst as a roaring Finn carries her like that, Rose hopping up and down beside them with glee, toward the stand where Obi-Wan is waiting with the enormous Hogwarts Quidditch Cup.

“Traitor!” an outraged Keyan Farlander shouts at Rose as he and his friends sulkily gather up their things and prepare to leave.

“Don’t make my dad fire yours!” Rose shouts back at him.

Jannah is outright bawling as Obi-Wan hands the Cup to her. She holds it up to even more cheers and then she hands it to Rey so she can weep in Jess’ arms. Rey takes her turn raising the Cup, her face twinging from how hard she’s smiling as the crowd rains down its accolades.

And that’s when her gaze collides with Ben’s. He’s standing behind Obi-Wan, his hands in his pockets, and his features are as impassive as usual when they’re in public, but there’s no mistaking the look in his dark eyes. They burn with pride and heat in equal measure. He’s silently sharing in her triumph the only way that he can.

There’s no doubt in Rey’s mind as to what he’s wordlessly asking. And there’s nothing more that she wants in this moment than to be with him, to ride high on her victory with him, to tell him all that is in her heart.

She offers him a slight nod that goes unnoticed by everyone else.

✨✨✨

Rey gives Rose and her housemates the slip as they enter the castle. There’s going to be a party in the Gryffindor common room and she’ll have to come up with an explanation as to why she missed the first half of it, but that’s a problem for a later time. She races to the Serpentine Corridor in her sweaty, grass-and-dirt-stained Quidditch robes and she tumbles into the D.A.D.A. classroom and into Ben’s waiting arms, kicking the door shut behind her.

“You were fucking brilliant,” he mutters, pressing a feverish kiss to her lips and walking her backward until she’s pinned between him and the edge of his desk. “When you stood up—Jesus—don’t know whether I ought to wring your pretty little neck or to fuck you senseless—”

“You can do both,” Rey says, breathless, kissing him back, grasping for him, clutching at him and locking her thighs around his hips after he’s hauled her up onto the teacher’s table. She wants him now. She’d gone a whole week without and now she is triumphant and she wants to get railed.

But first—

“Ben,” Rey moans as he nips at her neck, his hands moving to lift up her scarlet-and-gold jersey, “Ben, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I—”

The classroom door swings open.

They hadn’t locked it, too caught up in the rush of adrenaline and the heat of the moment.

The sound of the creaking door seems to swallow up all the light in Rey’s world.

“Professor Solo.” Sharp and nasal tones cut through the air like glass. “Miss Niima.”

Rey almost doesn’t want to look but she can’t help it, drawn to train-wreck, drawn to disaster. She and Ben turn their heads to the doorway at the same time.

Armitage Hux is standing there, holding a scroll of parchment. He’s staring at them.

“I was looking for you. To discuss the preparations for the career fair,” Hux tells Ben in little more than a whisper, his arctic eyes fixed on the sight of a student spread out on the teacher’s table with his colleague standing between her legs, their bodies close together. “But it would appear that I’ve interrupted something.”