10. Chapter 10

It's all over school the next morning.

Those who might have wondered about the overnight surge of points in Gryffindor's hourglass— displayed along with the hourglasses of the other houses in the Entrance Hall for everyone to see— aren't left wondering for long.

Tallie knows, Rey had been forced to tell her and Finn and Jannah and Jess the details, and since the girl is Hogwarts' own personal one-woman gossip column that means it's not long before everyone knows about Rey and Professor Solo killing a manticore.

At least they're left in the dark about other things that had happened.

Professor Solo storms into the D.A.D.A. classroom looking like Obi-Wan had suddenly retired and installed Hux as the new headmaster.

"Turn to page 417," he snaps without preamble.

They don't have practical today; instead, it's a lecture on countermeasures for stealth and concealment magic.

Rey can't concentrate at all.

It's not that her attention is on something other than her teacher. It's that she's too busy staring at his lips— the shape of them the way they move— to hear a single word he's saying.

Merlin, she'd kissed those lips.

In the cold light of day, it doesn't seem like a real thing that had actually occurred.

But her body remembers. Her body is a traitor, balanced on the knife's edge of desire.

Rey fidgets in her seat.

She might have felt better about the whole thing if Solo made it a point to not look in her direction. At least that way she knows he's just as affected by her presence and they're both suffering. But, as it is, his gaze slides onto her and then just as smoothly slides onto another one of her classmates as he talks.

It's like she's just another student.

It's like he hadn't made her come last night. His knee wedged between her thighs.

It's the longest lecture of Rey's life. She all but heaves a sigh of relief when Solo concludes it.

"Any questions?"

He slouches against the teacher's desk with one hand shoved into the pocket of his trousers. So casual and yet so elegant.

Tallie's the first to pipe up. "Sir, just how did a manticore wind up in the Forbidden Forest? Aren't they native only to Iran?"

Rey can hardly believe Tallie's daring. She glances over her shoulder and the other girl looks giddy and starstruck— as do a lot of other students as they wait for Solo's response. It's a stark contrast to the wariness they'd displayed around him following his duel with Hux.

Apparently, coming to Rey's rescue and slaying a dangerous beast is more than enough to redeem Ben Solo in the eyes of the other seventh years.

He doesn't seem pleased by Tallie's line of inquiry, but he does his best to be forthcoming. "We have determined that it was most probably smuggled into Britain and traded on the black market as an exotic pet. Given the impossibility of handling a full-grown manticore, this would have occurred when the creature was a pup. As it grew larger and more dangerous, its owner likely realized that they were in over their head and set it loose. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures is aware of the situation and all efforts are being made to track down the complicit parties." He looks toward another corner of the room. "Yes, Miss Connix?"

"How were you and Rey able to kill the manticore, sir?" asks Kaydel, one of the Slytherins.

"The final blow was dealt using a curse I do not have the authority to teach in a classroom setting. Should you succeed in your application to the Auror program and other similar careers, you will be trained in magic of an equivalent caliber." Solo's reply is startlingly diplomatic. He's apparently learned a thing or two from being a politician's son. "Prior to that, however, Miss Niima was able to incapacitate the beast with a fine example of the Conjunctivitis Curse, which we will be covering later on."

Rey swallows as she finds herself on the receiving end of a classroom's worth of impressed looks and murmurs. She doesn't know whether to sink down in her seat and try to become invisible or to— well, to preen, and in all honesty it's the feeling of wanting to do the latter that's horrible.

More hands rise into the air. An annoyed expression crosses Solo's face. "Are there any questions related to today's lecture?" Silence, the hands dropping back down. "Good. Class dismissed."

For the second time that term, Rey tells Finn and Rose to go on ahead as they filter out into the corridor. "Are you going to thank Professor Solo for saving your life?" Rose chirps with the most shit-eating grin Rey has ever seen. "Are you going to swoon into his muscular arms?"

"Go away," Rey shoos her, and if it comes out more pointed than the joke had warranted, Rose doesn't seem to notice, laughing and waving goodbye as she and Finn head to the Great Hall for lunch.

"He's not that muscular," Rey hears a slightly peeved Finn tell his girlfriend.

"Oh, you know my heart belongs to your muscles, babe," Rose says airily.

If only they knew... It feels odd and wrong to Rey to be keeping a secret from her two best friends, but it's not like she has any other choice. She trusts Finn and Rose to not tell anyone else if she were to swear them to silence, but she wouldn't like for them to think less of Professor Solo, either.

She marches back into the classroom, pulling his coat out of her bag. She'd shrunk it earlier so there would be space amidst her books and quills and ink pots, and it expands back to its original size as she cancels the charm. He's in the middle of erasing his calligraphic scrawl from the blackboard, but he freezes in place when he hears her footsteps, her carefully cleared throat.

He doesn't turn around right away. It's slow, almost cautious. The look on his face is sullen and resigned. Their eyes don't meet when she gives him back his coat, but their fingers accidentally brush. Even just that light contact is something like an electric shock to Rey's system.

They're alone together in an empty room in a nigh empty wing of the castle. The air is rife with static. Rich with forbidden possibility.

"Thank you." It's gotten so quiet that her hushed tones fall like a stone dropping into water.

"Don't mention it." Solo folds the coat over the back of his chair. "You're playing tomorrow, yes?"

"Yes." Tomorrow is the first Quidditch match of the season. "Seeker."

"I know." His features soften infinitesimally. "Break a leg, then. Not in the literal sense."

"Thank you," Rey says again, feeling a little bit like an inane parrot.

He hesitates, as if he's about to say something more, then he appears to think better of it and gestures to the doorway. "If there's nothing else, Miss Niima..."

"Actually—" What do you mean "actually," screams Rey's common sense, just go, fucking hell— "Why did you invent that curse? What were the circumstances?"

Solo abruptly whirls back to the blackboard and resumes erasing the day's notes. He's doing it manually, which is on par with loads of Muggleborns and half-bloods— there are some things that this group, Rey included, simply doesn't think to use magic for.

If she were to go nearer to him now, he would smell like chalk. If he were to hold her, his fingers would leave white smears on her skin.

She's starting to think that he won't indulge her nosiness— and she's almost grateful for that— when he says, in a hollow voice, "Well, if you really want to know, now you're going to."

It sounds like a warning. Rey's every instinct is telling her that she won't like what she's about to hear, that she should leave while she can. But she doesn't.

She stays right where she is.

"I assume you're familiar with the First Order."

Rey nods, and instantly feels stupid for nodding. He has his back to her. "Yes," she says out loud.

"I was one of them."

No.

She initially can't do anything but stare at him with utter blankness as reality is pulled out from under her feet. She's overcome by dizziness, plowing through her in gray-lit waves. It's impossible, she can't have heard him right.

The First Order are murderers. Pureblood supremacists. How could he even have been allowed to come to the United Kingdom, to teach at Hogwarts—

"I've always had an aptitude for Dark magic," Solo continues. He is placid and might even be deemed conversational, oblivious to the fact that, for Rey, the safe, secure world she knows is crashing down all around her. "I told you the core of my previous wand was rougarou hair— a material that's highly conducive to the sort of spells that few morally upright individuals would even dream of using. The wand chooses the wizard, doesn't it? That wand chose me when I was eleven." He sets the eraser down, the blackboard wiped clean, and turns around again to methodically pack away his things one by one. His face is devoid of all expression. "Of course, this predilection was not encouraged. I learned some things in secret, did some independent reading that would have raised eyebrows if anyone had known, but eventually I focused my interests on defending against the type of magic that had fascinated me in the first place. Upon graduating from Ilvermorny, I applied for and was accepted into MACUSA's Auror program."

It makes sense, Rey thinks. His skill in dueling, his encyclopedic and instinctive knowledge of attack spells and their counters— it is suddenly the rightest thing in the universe that Ben Solo would be a former Auror. She clings to that like it's a life raft, because everything else has gone horribly wrong.

"My mother was well on her way to becoming president at that point. I didn't want special treatment and she in turn didn't want me singled out in such a high-risk job on account of being her son. So I dropped Organa from my surname and joined the ranks as Ben Solo. Under the International Statute of Secrecy and also for safety reasons, the names of Muggle spouses are not to be mentioned in the wizarding press—"

"I mean, I know that," Rey mumbles despite her better judgment. She's not totally clueless.

A tiny half-smile glints at the corner of Solo's mouth but he's quick to duck his head, intent on rolling up his myriad scrolls of parchment neatly. "It was smooth sailing for the first few years. The public knew that I worked for MACUSA in some capacity, but I was assigned to enough sensitive cases that there was good reason for journalists to be obstructed from nosing around." The last scroll disappears into his bag and he starts on the books, shrinking them to a more convenient size before tucking them inside. "Then the First Order rose, growing bolder and more organized as time passed. Their leader— Snoke— was the most accomplished Dark wizard I've ever encountered on the battlefield. It was last year, during my third skirmish with him and his men, that he hit me with the Imperius Curse."

Solo does smile, then. It's twisted and humorless, and Rey hates it. "Do you know what that is, Miss Niima?"

"We discussed the Unforgivable Curses in fifth year," Rey says tautly. Imperio, Crucio, and Avada Kedavra. In Britain, any witch or wizard found guilty of casting any of these three is automatically sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban.

"The Imperius Curse was Snoke's specialty. He'd honed it to an art form. In an instant, I became a slave to his will." Done with the books, Solo is putting away his writing supplies now. His tone still excruciatingly nonchalant. "I turned on my fellow Aurors that night. Afterwards, I left with the First Order when Snoke sounded the retreat. He'd gotten what he came for— me. He had spies everywhere and he knew that I was the president's son. For the next few months, he put me to work both on the front lines and in his research division, inventing new curses. It was all a haze. There were voices in my head, feeding my own darkness."

Rey wants to stop listening, but she can't. She'd asked for this and now here it is, the ugly truth, laid out before her. Her heart aches as she imagines a numb, confused Ben Solo, his usually vibrant eyes glazed over and dull.

"My father went looking for me, because he is an idiot," he dispassionately continues. His fingers have stilled at an ink pot, curled around the black sheen of it. "To this day, I still don't know how he managed— although he was something of a con man in his youth. Tricks of the trade, I suppose. He zeroed in on the general area in the Adirondacks where the First Order base was located, but of course he couldn't actually find it, because it was Unplottable. So he wandered around the forest calling my name because he is— and I cannot state this enough— an idiot." Solo's features knit together in a bitter scowl. "Snoke found it amusing. Obviously, he didn't have a very high regard for Muggles in the first place, and this just seemed to prove his point. He fortified his Imperio on me and sent me out to kill my father with the latest spell I'd created."

"But you didn't," Rey bursts out desperately. "You said it yourself, your father's alive—"

"He is." Solo shoves the ink pot into his bag. "I cast Sectumsempra on him. Aimed it right at his heart. The moment his chest split open, I realized what I'd done and Snoke's hold on me broke. I took Dad and I Apparated to the nearest hospital. Then I snapped my wand in half and turned myself in." He closes his bag and hoists it up by the strap onto one broad shoulder. "The First Order was defeated not long after that. My mother worked tirelessly behind the scenes to keep my name out of official reports and to grant me a full pardon. Her most trusted advisors thought it would be best if I were to get out of the States for a while, so she met with Obi-Wan and secured the Defense Against the Dark Arts post for me, which I still consider highly ironic." He finally looks at Rey straight on, and whatever he sees written all over her face elicits yet another one of those faint, self-deprecating, thoroughly unhappy smiles. "And so now you know, Miss Niima. I'm here because I'm not a good man. A good man would have fought harder against an Imperius Curse, wouldn't have almost murdered his own father. A good man wouldn't have taken advantage of you in the woods. You'll do well to stay away from me," he concludes as he walks past her and up the stairs to his office.

Leaving her alone in his classroom, with nothing for company except the silence.

✨✨✨

Rey is hardly given any time to process Solo's revelations. Potions class in the afternoon is nothing short of trial by fire, Hux even more of a terror than usual due to the manticore venom having been snatched from his grasp. Afterwards, she spends the remaining daylight hours on the Quidditch pitch with the rest of her teammates, squeezing in one last practice before tomorrow's game.

At dinner time, Obi-Wan addresses the elephant— or, well, the dead manticore— in the room, his spiel similar to that of Professor Solo's. The DRCMC is on the case, there's nothing to worry about, everyone please give a hand to Miss Niima for her bravery and quick thinking.

Rey has to resist the urge to dive under the table as the Great Hall bursts into applause.

She falls into a deep, exhausted slumber later that night. She dreams of a man in a green forest, doomed to wander forever, calling out for his lost son.

Game day dawns bright and clear, rare for November but absolutely welcome.

"All right, lads, this is it." Jannah launches into her customary pep talk. "Pava, Dyun, and Fry, we want a really tight formation, just like we practiced." The Chasers nod. "Ollim and Tharandon, if you accidentally swing a Bludger at any single one of your teammates again, I swear to Merlin, I'll kill you." The Beaters look abashed. "Niima, we need a big lead over Slytherin to demoralize all the other houses— start strong, you know— so waffle about for a bit before catching the Snitch, yeah?"

"Got it," Rey says.

"Crush their bones to dust!" Jannah yells, pumping a fist in the air as she leads her team out onto the pitch, more than a few of them shaking their heads at their captain's fervor.

"Can you imagine when she goes pro after Hogwarts," Jess stage-whispers to Rey. "It'll be a bloodbath."

Rey doesn't bother to respond. Whatever she might have said would have been swallowed up by the roar of the crowd, anyway.

The stands are packed. On one side, people are wearing scarves and waving streamers of red and gold, while on the other green and silver dominate. Finn and Rose are sitting together, holding a huge sign with Rey's picture plastered above the words MANTICORE SLAYER in block letters.

There are a lot of teachers present— even Professor Yoda had come out. Rumor has it that he enjoys watching Jannah's games because of the inevitable carnage.

Squinting against the sun, Rey searches the part of the stands where the faculty usually huddle together. It takes her a long while to admit, even to just herself, that she's looking for a familiar head of lush dark hair and piercing features.

It takes her an even longer while to come to terms with the fact that she can't find him.

Well, it's not like anyone who isn't a player is required to go to the matches, but...

Maybe he's not sitting with the other teachers.

She's still darting furtive glances towards the crowd as Jannah shakes hands with the Slytherin captain. By the time Poe Dameron blows his whistle and the team takes to the air, Rey's heart has never felt heavier. She soars above the pitch on her trusty old school-issued broomstick and can't stop scanning the audience every once in a while, long after the Quaffle and the Bludgers have started whizzing about among the players. Reality grows harder and harder to deny with every second that ticks past.

Professor Solo isn't here.

He didn't come to watch her game.