45. Chapter 45

Ben paces the length of the cell with a restless grace, his alert gaze constantly roving over every nook and cranny. He’s not Occluding; it’s wholly possible to see him come up with various plans and countermeasures and file them away for later use. The effect is not dissimilar to a caged panther, loping through bars of moonlight, and Rey can’t decide whether it’s an effect that’s ruined or compounded by the fact that he keeps stomping on the limp bodies of the hapless Pryde and Johans—a little too often to be unintentional.

She’s still sitting down, tucked against the wall. As far away from him as possible. It’s too far and not close enough all at once.

It’s been so long since they were alone together like this.

Granted, a couple of dark wizards are also here, but they’ve been dosed with Draught of Living Death so they don’t count. They won’t wake until Wiggenweld Potion is administered. And, in any case, Ben is all that Rey can focus on. He’s all that she has room for after the harrowing series of events in this disastrous night that isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

But speaking of the dark wizards…

Rey springs up and hurries over to Pryde. “He knows that I’ve trained in Occlumency,” she explains in response to Ben’s quizzical stare. “He used Legilimency on me but I was able to block him. Gave me a splitting headache, though.” She kneels beside Pryde and casts Obliviate, removing the memory and, therefore, any chance that she would be questioned in the future about where she’d learned such a skill.

Once she’s pocketed her wand and returned to her previous spot on the floor by the wall, Ben’s fists clench at his sides. “He hurt you?” he barks.

Rey freezes, not really knowing how to respond to that, not really knowing what to make of it. A growl rips itself loose from Ben’s throat and he kicks Pryde again. Repeatedly. His teeth bared, making him look almost feral.

It’s somehow awful and thrilling to watch, all at the same time.

“I think he’s quite unconscious enough,” Rey finally ventures, a little too loud in the silence of the cell.

Ben gets one last frustrated kick in before he resumes his pacing.

Her senses are heightened the way that they always are when it comes to him. His tie is askew and his shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His waistcoat is speckled with scorch-marks and blood that she hopes isn’t his. He moves through the tiny space with his loping steps and everything else falls away. He smells like battle, like sweat and dark magic.

“I can’t believe you made it through the entire ground level and only got Petrified.” Even to her own ears, Rey’s tone is more cross than she’d intended for it to come out.

Ben blinks as though he’s surprised that she’s actually talking to him. It’s only then that it hits her that they’d spent the last several minutes in total silence.

“I sustained a handful of other curses, most of them internal,” he finally says. “But your General Counter-Spell took care of all of that.”

Tension comes flooding back through her system, her every muscle coiling tight. “You know as well as I do that Finite Incantatem doesn’t cancel every curse in the book! You have to let me check—”

“I’m fine.” He stops pacing. He’s staring at her now. His expression is—wistful. And, given their circumstances, out of place. “There is no need to worry.”

She thinks about all those jets of green light that had pelted her with cruel and carefree abandon. She thinks about how he’d taken on that same army to get to her. She thinks about how close he must have come to dying.

And her fury builds and builds. And her next words grate off of her tongue in a snarl. “Of all the reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, stupidest things—”

“That’s my line, I believe,” he drawls.

In the time before, such a wry remark from him would have tripped her up. She would have sputtered and been indignant. She would have let the argument be defused or she would have stormed off or shut down before they found themselves in complicated and murky waters.

Of course, storming out of the room is definitely not an option at the moment. But neither are any of her old coping mechanisms.

Rey stands up, her hands on her hips. “Don’t interrupt me. It’s not my behavior we’re discussing. You were perfectly beastly to me and now here you are nearly getting killed to come to my rescue. It doesn’t work like that, Ben!” Her voice rises as she hits her stride and she has to take a deep breath to regain some semblance of calm. “You wanted us to stay away from each other. You said that it was for the best,” she continues flatly. “This isn’t staying away from each other.”

Ben’s jaw clenches. The burning fades from his eyes and his broad shoulders slump in what looks like defeat. “I won’t be able to bear it if anything happens to you,” he admits in little more than an aching whisper. “I just—I just need to make sure that you’re safe—”

“But that doesn’t get to be your concern anymore,” she says, the back of her throat prickling with unshed sobs. “You keep pushing me away, telling me that it’s for my own good, and then you keep running back to me whenever you develop a conscience or a, I don’t know, a boner—” She presses the back of her hand to her eyes, hurriedly scrubbing away the tears that she finds there. “I was so miserable these last few weeks, but I knew that I would be okay and that I’d eventually move on. Now you’re here, playing the hero, assuring me that you care, and I’m afraid that I’m back to square one. I can’t go through this again. The next time you tell someone they’re not worth the cost of fighting, then bloody well don’t almost die for them—”

The end of the sentence wavers somewhere between her teeth and her chest. She clamps her lips together in a tight line before she can break in front of him.

He staggers toward her. There could be no other way to describe it. He moves like the floor will give at any second. Like he doesn’t know where his next step will lead.

Rey holds her ground as Ben comes to a stop in front of her. Just within arm’s reach, hunched over her with an awkward demeanor and expression so haggard in the moon’s silver radiance. She belatedly notices that he has dark circles under his eyes and his features are drawn enough that they’re almost gaunt, or as gaunt as it’s possible for a man of his stature to look. The scar runs down his pale skin like lightning.

“When I said that, about the cost,” he grates out, “I meant your schooling—your reputation—your future—those were what I didn’t want to risk any more than we already had. What I meant was that I lost so much to the dark arts and when you used them to protect me—to protect us—I panicked. Nothing, no bliss of holding you in my arms, is worth consigning you to a miserable existence. What I meant was that I could lose you as long as you didn’t lose the life that you deserved. That you’ll always deserve.”

Rey glares up at him. Another emotion is added to the turmoil that is currently whirling through her. It’s sheer, abject humiliation. It stings.

“You knew I’d misunderstand that,” she says thickly. “You know what my childhood was like. You—you knew—” He doesn’t deny it, he at least has the decency to look down at his feet in shame, and it hurts and it’s freeing all at once. Her eyes narrow as she stumbles across some horrible epiphany that had been too long in the making. “You knew,” she repeats slowly, “and you used that to destroy me. So that I’d give up. You knew how much it would mess with my head but you went and did it because it was the most efficient way to achieve your goal. Breaking my heart was a means to an end.”

“Rey—” Ben is crying. At first, she thinks that it’s a trick of light and shadow spattering across his scarred face through the window bars but, sure enough, there are tears dripping down his long nose. The tops of his cheeks and the tips of his ears flush red amidst the silvery pale.

“You’re so cruel, Ben.” She forces out the words through a mouthful of bittersweet thorns. “You don’t realize how badly you hurt other people because it’s second nature for you to not let yourself feel anything. You can experience the best and the worst that life has to offer and you lock it all away, just like that.” Rey makes a helpless gesture with her hands, encompassing that heart of his that she’d foolishly tried to conquer with all of her clumsy earnestness, with all of her wild yearning. “For you, Occlumency is more than just habit, it’s instinct.” She remembers how she’d shut down during the dragon demonstration. How she’d robbed herself of those first several exciting moments. “It must be so cold inside of you. Just an endless winter.”

She watches his broad frame heave with garbled sobs in the moonlight. The sight is blurry because her tears have started falling, too. And he’s still not looking at her but he reaches for her, blindly, desperately, and she allows it.

Rey doesn’t return Ben’s embrace. Instead, she stands as still as a statue, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, the tip of her nose pressed to the jut of his shoulder as he cries into her neck. The relief that courses through her is piercing—the relief at finding him so warm and solid and alive in the midst of all these enemies. And there is another kind of relief as well, small and secret. She has to coax willpower into her muscles so that her body doesn’t collapse against his like a familiar, beloved melody. Like a favorite song that she hasn’t heard in years finally seeping back into her life through the cracks of time and radio waves.

“Occlumency is the best defense against the Imperius Curse,” Ben mumbles into the collar of her blouse. “An Occlumens at the top of their game is capable of resisting the spell. I wasn’t. I didn’t. I had the natural ability for it but I never made the time to sufficiently hone this skill. It just never seemed that critical and there were so many other things to do—to focus on. And then Snoke happened and I—” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I killed so many people, Rey. Aurors. Innocent civilians. I tortured them. I brought buildings down over their heads. Christ, if you knew even half of the things I’ve done—”

“I would have wanted to know,” she tells him. Her voice comes out as this weak, pitiful, mewling thing, what feels like her entire soul reverberating with the horrors he’s endured and inflicted. “I would have wanted to help you through it, the same way you’ve helped me. We could have gotten through it together.”

He shakes his head without lifting it from the crook of her shoulder. “It would have been a wretched process. You don’t deserve that.”

She stiffens in his arms. “I decide what I deserve! Stop making my choices for me. You don’t get to convince yourself that I’m old enough for you to shag and then call me a child when the going gets rough—”

Ben releases another sob, muffled against her skin. He tightens his grip on her. “I wanted to push you away. I would have done anything—said anything—to get you away from me—”

“You promised that you would never push me away again.” Her tears are spilling hard and fast now, in response to his. They’re getting each other’s sleeves wet with salt and regret while they’re trapped in a cell with two unconscious old men and there’s a tiny corner of her mind that’s aware of just how ridiculous this is, but it can’t be helped. This is the reckoning. This is everything that she’s ever wanted to say to him since the day he left her. “Remember? In the classroom the night of the Celestial Ball. You promised that you would never again use Occlumency when it was just the two of us. And this whole year you kept promising that you would be better, that I could count on you—”

“I’m sorry.” Ben says it like a groan that’s been ripped from out of his chest. “I’m so sorry, Rey. I ruined this. I ruined us. I’m sorry.” He finally raises his head, cradling her face in his large hands. She nearly gasps when she sees the fiery devotion in his red-rimmed eyes. He presses tearful, reverent kisses to her brow and her damp cheeks and she’s not strong enough to fight it, she has missed this so, so much—

—and then he moves to kiss her lips, and sanity comes crashing back—

“No.” Rey extricates herself from Ben. His hands fall away from her and all that she feels is loss as she steps back, widening the distance between them once more. “You can’t kiss me to make all of this go away, because it won’t. We need to figure our shit out or else this will just happen again. You say that you want to give me what I deserve—well, what I deserve is to not be trapped in this cycle with my happiness hinging on you not changing your mind yet again about this—this fling, or whatever we had—”

“It wasn’t a fling,” Ben says hoarsely. “Not to me.”

She cocks her head, regarding him with deep suspicion. She’s tempted to ask what exactly it had been, then, but that would just be another distraction in itself. “You broke your promises easily enough, so it sounds like a fling to me.”

Even now, Rey wonders if she’s being a bitch. Ben is here, he had come to rescue her, he’s not Occluding, and he’s sincerely contrite. Not only that—he’d also unearthed his lingering trauma at Snoke’s hands, taken it from where it had been buried and dusted it off for her to dissect. Surely she could afford to be a little more kind…

No. This is the time to be honest. To hash it all out. She won’t be trapped in the cycle any longer.

Ben cups one hand over his trembling mouth in a clear effort to stifle his weeping. It’s like watching the collapse of a mighty dam that has held fast for decades. Rey thinks about how her emotions had swept through her like a storm after she’d torn down her own walls; she can only imagine how much harder it is for him.

His nose is bright red now, making him look kind of like Rudolph the Reindeer. She wants to kiss the tip of it and tell him that everything’s going to be all right—but she doesn’t know that for sure, does she? It’s all up to him. It depends on what he will do next.

Please fight for us, she silently begs him. I won’t go down without giving it my all, but I can’t do it alone.

Finally, he speaks. “I think—” The words shatter on his tongue. He swallows and tries again. “I think that I lived in the fantasy of us for a long, long time. When I was with you, I forgot everything else. My past, my worst traits, my darkest secrets—none of it mattered. There was only you.” His voice is so soft. “After I broke through Snoke’s Imperius, I still felt as though as I was cursed. I walked around in a fog most days and I couldn’t ask anyone for help because I’d already asked for their forgiveness. That was when I started taking my Occlumency exercises seriously—and I got very good at it. It enabled me to compartmentalize all the psychological fallout from my time with the First Order. From what I did to my father.” He chokes on another sob, hanging his head. “But it was also a way to make sure that no one could ever take control of me again. Still, I was barely living. I slept and I ate and I spoke when spoken to, but it was all just empty. Then—then I went to Hogwarts, and I met you—”

Ben pauses. He meets Rey’s eyes, and his fill with a surge of fresh tears. “I met you,” he repeats, “and you wanted me even after knowing what I’d done and you wouldn’t let me bullshit you with Occlumency. I swear that the skies cleared. I swear that it was like coming up for air. You were my anchor and my escape. You were my sweet girl. The rest of it just wasn’t as important anymore.”

Rey’s every instinct is screaming at her to go to Ben. To hold him. But there’s another instinct that soon kicks in, telling her that he needs to excise this wealth of unspoken words from his system. There’s an urgency to his tone, and a certain gratefulness that it’s all finally being dragged out of him. That it’s all finally being acknowledged.

So she stays where she is, her feet planted firmly on the floor. She wraps her arms around herself and she cries quietly, thinking not of her own pain but of all that he has had to endure and is enduring now.

“There was never a promise I made to you that I didn’t intend to keep.” Ben’s hands drop to his sides, palms open, like surrender. “But then the unthinkable happened and the real world came crashing down on us, and I panicked. I believed that the only recourse was to end things, to distance you from me and from the situation as much as possible. So I did. And I…” His features crumple, all blotchy and tear-stained. “I’ve been in hell ever since.”

Go to him, Rey’s inner voice urges. You have to, you have to. She feels as though she’s going to scream if she doesn’t get to touch him within the next few seconds.

But there’s one more thing that she needs from him.

There’s one more thing that she needs him to say.

“Why are you here now, then?” Rey hears herself ask. “If that was your goal, why did you come charging in first? Now we’re stuck in a cell together. Isn’t this the very last thing that you wanted?”

Before Ben can respond, a burst of white light glides into the room. It’s a swan, regal and beautiful, with a long neck and wings like sails that float delicately through the shadowed air.

The Patronus lands in front of Ben and speaks in a throaty, seductive voice that leaves no doubt in Rey’s mind as to who had cast it. “We’ve drawn most of them to the graveyard. You should be able to handle the rest. Find Ganner and get out of there. Spells will be flying everywhere once you exit the church, so be careful.”

✨✨✨

Rey is glowering something fierce at an oblivious Ben’s back as they make their way out of the cell. He had certainly wasted no time in acting like their harrowing conversation had never happened in his rush to do Tahiri Veila’s bidding.

Rey knows that she’s being uncharitable. Actually, she’s pretty sure that she’s being downright illogical. But she can’t help it. The thought of that glamorous aspect of his past settles into her like a toothache.

The next few corridors are all empty but, still, Ben and Rey move through them with caution. The muffled roar of a ferocious battle raging beyond the main doors gradually becomes apparent as they near the middle of the ground level. All of a sudden there’s a series of clattering footsteps from above and Ben grabs Rey’s hand, pulling her under a flight of stairs. She hardly dares to breathe as they listen to more members of Palpatine’s remnant thunder down the steps and charge outside.

Ben turns to Rey once it’s quiet again. “I need you to construct a detection spell with me,” he says in low tones. “It’s the same basic principle as Homenum Revelio, albeit inconspicuous to the target and requiring at least two wands to amplify it to a greater range.”

“All right,” she says, gamely enough. “D’you need to be holding my hand while we cast it, then?”

He looks down at their entwined fingers. “No,” he rasps softly, hesitating for far too long before he lets her go.

Her eyes fill with the sharp sting of new tears at the loss, but she determinedly blinks them away and gives all of her attention to Ben as he takes her through the incantation and the wand movement.

“Ready?” he prompts after a while, and she nods, and together aspen and blackthorn trace patterns in the air, murmured magic leaving lips in a resonant chorus.

The detection spell works swiftly and silently, without much fanfare. Orbs of red light take shape in the levels above, glowing through layers of wood and stone. Rey counts twenty in all, bobbing around except for one that is eerily still in a far-flung corner of the second floor.

“That’s probably Rhysode,” Ben says, indicating the unmoving orb. “He’s not being guarded. Notice how the other dots are mostly clustered at the edge of the building? They’re sniping out the windows. We should be able to sneak past them. We’ll grab Rhysode and leave the way we came. Remember what Tahiri said about spells flying—keep your shield up as soon as we’re through the main doors.”

“Yes, of course we must follow precious Tahiri’s instructions to the letter,” Rey grunts, hating herself, hating how the other woman’s name sounds in his low, deep rumble.

Ben frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” Rey pushes past him, embarrassed beyond belief. “Let’s just go.”

“Rey, wait—”

She doesn’t listen. She charges up the stairs and onto the second-floor landing, only to cross paths with five members of the remnant who from the looks of it had been about to join the fray outdoors. Several curses jet toward her all at once; three of them slam into the Protego that she hastily erects while she’s able to dodge two more and reel off a handful of jinxes that all hit their respective marks.

Ben catches up to her just as another ten dark wizards come streaming out of the room they’d been holed up in, drawn by the commotion. “To me!” he snaps, and she obeys automatically, her body seeking his amidst the chaos until they’re fighting back-to-back, surrounded.

It's like clockwork, some distant part of Rey thinks. Like dancing. She instinctively knows how to move around him, how to cover him. She’s never worked this well with other dueling partners.

Ben conjures a swarm of large, sinister-looking hornets that descend upon several of the remnant, stinging their exposed skin. He turns around and deflects a curse that had been meant for Rey. “Are you jealous of Tahiri?” he demands in the same breath.

“No,” she growls, nonverbally Stunning the person who had fired the curse. “Why should I be? It’s no business of mine, you certainly made that clear when you never breathed a word to me that you had a half-Veela ex-girlfriend—”

“She’s a quarter-Veela,” Ben mumbles, hitting another opponent with an Impedimenta that slows his movement, allowing Rey to target the floor by the dark wizard’s feet with an Expulso Curse.

“My mistake!” she yells at Ben as her spell sends up an explosion of blue light that throws the Impedimented wizard and several of his cronies into the walls. “Merlin forbid that I get her lineage all wrong and that you give me some warning that she was coming to Hogwarts—”

“I didn’t know that she was until the night of the feast.” Ben’s dark eyes glint with annoyance right before he and Rey are forced to separate to avoid the next volley of curses.

Rey rolls to the ground and then leaps back up. She doesn’t give anyone anything to hit. She casts what seems like every curse and counter-spell that she learned at school. She would be lying if she were to say that she’s not enjoying this at least a little bit.

It's the adrenaline. It’s the fact of her survival on the line. It’s knowing that she’ll get to continue breathing because she’s good enough, fast enough, smart enough.

It’s almost like she’d been born for this.

Ben, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to be in any sort of mood for her life-changing revelations. Once they’ve winnowed the enemy ranks back down to five and they meet in the middle of the landing, in a swirl of hexes and Shield Charms, he hisses, “Why do you care, anyway?”

Rey nearly misses a step, she’s so confused. “What do you mean why do I—”

She has to break off in order to shoot a hurried Expelliarmus at the wizard coming up behind Ben, brandishing some sort of close-quarters spell in the form of a whip of burning electricity streaming from the tip of his wand. Once he’s disarmed, Ben turns to face him and punches him square across the jaw, barely waiting until he’s dropped before whirling back to Rey.

“You shouldn’t care anymore,” he snarls. “Not after getting so cozy with that Gray kid—”

“Have you gone daft?” Rey shrieks. Purple light flashes at the periphery of her vision and she impatiently sidesteps it, flicking off a Knee-Reversal Hex at her attacker in response. “There is nothing going on between me and Aleson—”

“Sure looked like there was when I caught the two of you sneaking around after hours.” Ben tackles her out of the way of a Blasting Curse of immense proportions. Her spine hits the floor, his body a solid weight on top of hers.

“We were coming from a deathday party,” Rey seethes. “There was a whole bunch of other people with us, you just didn’t see them.”

He pauses, looking—incredibly relieved. It’s a relief that takes years off of his face. It lasts for only a fleeting second, soon replaced with intense focus as his wand slashes through the air and a ring of black flames surround them. The same protective barrier that he’d used in his duel with Hux last October.

“What about that quaint little scene by the lake?” Ben presses as he and Rey get to their feet. More dark wizards come filtering out of another room up ahead; a few others are revived by their comrades, set right with counter-spells.

Rey’s brow creases in momentary bewilderment as she views the black-robed figures through the wall of flickering dark fire. She absentmindedly counts twelve of them, then she remembers—Ben walking back to the castle, a brown paper bag clutched in his hand—

“I don’t know why Aleson was there, but I didn’t plan on meeting him there—I don’t think of him in that way,” she argues. “So you did see us.”

“Yeah.” Ben’s voice has gone tattered at the edges. “I was coming to bring you food. Because you didn’t look like you’d been eating. It was—it was a ham sandwich.”

She huffs out a sound that’s caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Several months ago, she’d told him about her thwarted attempt to gift him with a ham sandwich. What had been the use of him making such a reference when he’d told her that they had to put an end to everything… “You’re unbelievable.”

He has the grace to look ashamed. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m glad that you didn’t get to give that to me.” There’s no doubt that she would have cherished such a gesture, but it would have also severely regressed her attempts to move on and it would have only caused more heartache as the days passed.

“I’m really stupid,” Ben admits. “You make me stupid. I don’t know.”

One of the black-robed figures steps closer to the barrier. She’s a tall woman with icy features and straw-colored hair cropped short. “What are the two of you whispering about in there?” she asks with a trace of amusement, peering at them through the flames. “Saying your goodbyes? How touching—bit young for you, isn’t she, Auror Solo?”

Ben adjusts the ward so that he can be heard on the other side of the barrier. In all honesty, he seems more irritated with the interruption than concerned for Rey’s life or his own, considering the fact that they’re outnumbered and outflanked. “Shut the fuck up, Phasma,” he bites out, and Rey blinks. A Ben who doesn’t Occlude around other people is… certainly something else. “Color me un-fucking-surprised that you’ve thrown your lot in with these geriatric nitwits and their harebrained revenge scheme. You never were in possession of an abundance of common goddamn sense.”

“Snoke has been executed and the First Order is gone. Thanks to you,” the witch silkily points out. “I was in dire need of entertainment. And whatever I am now, it’s better than what you’ve become, at any rate. A school teacher.” She smirks. “More to the point, a school teacher who’s going to die a rather horrible death tonight. Along with his ickle student.”

“And how exactly do you plan on accomplishing that?” Ben goads. “You know what I’m capable of. You were there when I invented spells beyond Snoke’s wildest dreams. Do you think you can drive a Killing Curse through this barrier without getting fried? I’d like to see you try, asshole.”

Phasma is silent for a while, her steely gaze shrewd as she weighs her options. “Not even you can maintain this sort of charm indefinitely,” she finally says. “You’ve got minutes, at most.”

A chill stabs through Rey as it dawns on her that Phasma is correct. A shield of this magnitude cannot be sustained for long. Ben is already worryingly pale as it is, drenched in sweat.

“You’re right,” he acknowledges, inclining his head toward Phasma in a semblance of a nod. “I can’t keep it up.” Rey’s heart sinks, only to still when he continues, “But what I can do is—this.”

And with another flick of Ben’s wand the dark barrier radiates outward in tendrils of charcoal smoke, plowing through the ranks of the cabal. Phasma and the rest scream as they’re engulfed by the crackling flames so swiftly that none of them have the chance to scramble out of the way or to shield themselves. All twelve of them are reduced to ash in mere seconds.

Rey’s eyes widen as her vision fills with death and burning.

The black flames vanish as quickly as they’d appeared. Ben’s hand drops back to his side and at first she can do nothing but stare at him, the air around them thick with the scent of char and the acrid taste of something metallic and primal.

His every breath is labored, his wide chest rising and falling in slow beats. His eyes are wild, as black as night, a lethal gleam in their depths.

That kind of magic eats away at the soul, he’d told her once. There would be no going back.

She takes one step toward him, and then another. Perhaps she should be scared of him, but she isn’t. She wants the man who could love somebody hard enough to break the Imperius Curse and she wants the man who would raze the earth to protect her.

Rey hurls herself into Ben’s arms, gripping him tight. It’s time to come back, she thinks as his heart pounds fitfully against her cheek. Come back to me now.

An eternity passes before his pulse steadies. Before the bite of dark magic dissipates. Before his hand clamps around her waist, pushing her closer to him as he buries the fingers of his other hand in her hair.

“I didn’t tell you about Tahiri because she and Rhysode and Eryl and all of them—they were the ones that I betrayed,” he mutters against her temple. “Even my childhood, my family’s story—the Fairy Pool—it hurt to share those things with you, mere bits and pieces though they were, because of all that came after. But someday I’ll tell you all about it, if you’ll let me. Someday I’ll tell you everything.”

Rey closes her eyes, snuggling into his chest, which feels like home. “I’d like that very much.”

✨✨✨

They find the real Ganner Rhysode unconscious in a storage box in what is clearly Pryde’s office. The Auror is worryingly thin and, even after Ben Rennervates him, can barely stand. Ben and Rey support Ganner between them as they leave the church; Rey doesn’t forget to keep her shield up, and a barrage of spells immediately crashes into it when she steps out into the graveyard.

The scene is pure chaos, written in moonlight. Rey spies the Aurors from both MACUSA and the British Ministry fighting side by side along with a handful of Hogwarts professors. Paige Tico is there as well, back-to-back with Poe, and Bodhi Rook is on his broomstick, raining down hexes from the sky.

But there are so many cabal members. The sheer number of them is alarming.

“Miss Niima, Professor Solo, over here!” Mon Mothma calls out. With a snap of her wand, five of the statues that had been mounted atop the tombstones spring to life, blocking the path of offensive spells as Ben and Rey drag Ganner over to friendlier ranks, where Tahiri Veila and Eryl Besa immediately rush to them.

“Yikes.” Eryl lets out a slow whistle as she gets a better look at Ben’s face. “Someone was able to carve you up in there, weren’t they, Solo?”

Rey freezes. Ben touches the scar that runs along his cheek. “Let my guard down,” he mumbles without so much as glancing at Rey. “Good thing I had dittany.”

As far as deceits go, Rey surmises, this one had been hard-won.

Fortunately, Eryl doesn’t ask too many questions. She busies herself with fussing over Ganner. “Oh, Rhysode, you big dope,” she says sadly, wiping his scraggly black hair from his brow as he is carefully deposited onto the ground.

“Fuck you, Besa, you’re not a real friend,” Ganner moans. “You couldn’t even tell it wasn’t me. You, too, Solo, you dick.”

“It’s a shame that Pryde didn’t use your tongue for his Polyjuice,” Ben drawls, and there’s a fleeting moment where Rey gets the sense that she’s catching a glimpse of his other life. The life that he’d had before Hogwarts, the bonds he’d made that had been forged on dangerous missions.

“Where’s that shit-eating lunatic?” Ben asks Eryl and Tahiri.

Tahiri shrugs. “I have no idea where your uncle is. He was supposed to lead the charge but he wasn’t there when we Apparated in.” She turns to Rey. “Miss Niima, can you Apparate? Do you know how to take someone on Side-Along?” At Rey’s nod, she continues, “The Anti-Disapparition Jinx ends sixteen feet past the cemetery gates. Take Ganner and bring him back to Hogwarts. Ben and I will cover you.”

“I can’t leave—” Rey realizes what she’s saying only at the last minute—“er, all of you here—”

“Miss Niima.” Ben’s tone is gentle. He is still not Occluding. His dark eyes hold hers, sincere under the stars. “We cannot fight to the best of our ability if we’re worried about you.”

There’s a lump in Rey’s throat. She knows what he’s trying to say. If she stays here, she might damn him.

So she nods again, and she prepares to run.

✨✨✨

Eryl douses Ganner with an Invigoration Draught. It’s not enough to restore him to fighting form and its effects will only be temporary, but at least he’ll be able to keep up with Rey until they make it to Hogwarts. She grabs his arm and they’re off, Ben on their left and Tahiri to the right.

There’s no more space to be jealous of Tahiri, not after everything, and Rey can’t help but feel a sense of awe as she watches the Auror out of the corner of her eye. Tahiri’s Shield Charm never falters even as she pulls off one fiendishly complicated spell after another. She and Ben move as a seamless unit, bulldozing a path through enemy territory with rapid, ceaseless, nonverbal casting. She doesn’t miss a beat even as she tosses a fallen foe’s wand to Ganner to afford him some added protection.

I’ll fight like this one day, Rey promises herself.

In the mad dash to the cemetery gates, Rey’s group passes by Armitage Hux, who is locked in startlingly ferocious combat with his father. “You ruined my life!” the Potions professor shrieks as he pelts Brendol with a slew of lethal curses that the older man seems like he’s having quite a difficult time dodging. “I was rejected for so many grants because of you! I can’t—even—get—tenure!”

“You tell ‘im, sir,” Rey mutters as she scurries past.

The gates are a stone’s throw away when one of the black-robed masses fires a powerful detonation spell that rends the earth in front of Rey. She loses her hold on Ganner as she is blasted off of her feet, sent sprawling over a collection of grave markers. She scrambles onto her hands and knees and retrieves her wand, frantically scanning the smoke-tinged battlefield for any sight of Ben until she sees him collapsed against a faraway tree trunk. Tahiri’s been knocked back, too, and she’s struggling to get up as a group of dark wizards converge in her direction. Ganner is clutching at the base of a toppled statue for support, looking winded.

And then there is green light. Rey’s head whips sharply to the left and she sees green light. Several jets of it, all heading straight for her.

There is no time to stand up. She cannot dodge. There are no counter-spells, no shield spells that will work.

Damn it, Rey thinks even as she begins to rotate her wrist in the prescribed wand movement.

The other Gryffindors will never let her hear the end of this.

“Erecto,” she intones, her wand lashing out in front of her in a wide arc.

In one fluid motion all the nearby gravestones rise up from out of the earth, piling on top of one another until they’ve formed a wall that’s several feet high. It’s a wall that is soon reduced to smithereens when the multitude of Killing Curses crashes into it, but Rey’s already gone by then, she’s running over to Ben amidst the fray and kneeling next to him.

He's bleeding. There’s a huge gash running down his side, blood soaking through his clothes. She’s already got her wand poised to start healing but he stops her, closing one large hand over her wrist.

“Rey.” Her name on his tongue is so solemn. As is the look on his face. “You have to go. Take Ganner and go.”

“No,” she bursts out, surprised to hear the tears in her own voice. “You’re injured—I’m not just going to leave you—”

“If anything else were to happen to you tonight, I won’t survive it,” Ben interrupts hoarsely. His fingers tighten on her wrist and his eyes take her in, deep and slow and reverent, as good as a kiss or almost. “Please trust me when I say I’ll be fine. Please do this for me. I’ll see you back at Hogwarts. All right?”

She’s mutinous at first, but every second that the two of them stay here arguing is another second that Ben isn’t helping the others, another second that the remnant is getting the upper hand in this battle. Another second that a spell might come flying at them and he won’t be able to do anything because he’s too worried about her.

“All—all right,” Rey chokes out, tasting salt on her tongue for what feels like the dozenth time this evening.

Ben smiles. It’s one of his rare, genuine smiles, so tender and so utterly, irrevocably adored by her.

“That’s my brave girl,” he murmurs. “My little lionheart.” His words burn through the roar of battle, through the light of magic, through the icy stars. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Now go.”