30. Chapter 30

That Wednesday, Jyn Erso-Andor’s N.E.W.T.-level students walk into the Charms classroom to find that it has been magically expanded to several times its original size. In lieu of the desks, there are nine wooden huts spaced out across the floor, each one hardly big enough to accommodate five people if they stand shoulder to shoulder.

“Right. We’re warding today,” Jyn announces. “You’ll work in groups of three that I’ve predetermined. It’s up to you which spells you want to use, but by the end of the session your huts should be completely impenetrable. Bonus points if it’s undetectable as well—stop that,” she barks, effectively silencing the grumbles that have been steadily rising up since she told them that she’d chosen their groups for them. “News flash—if you want to get anything done in the real world, you have to learn how to cooperate with everyone, not just your friends. I can’t believe you lot made it to seventh year.”

The class subsides. Jyn is scary. Charms had been considered the soft option at Hogwarts before she came along.

Rey is assigned to work with Tallie and Seff. It’s an odd combination, to say the least. Tallie has very little patience for quiet, bookish Ravenclaws like Seff, and Rey has historically chafed at Tallie’s controlling streak every time they do group projects together. As far as collaborations go, this one seems to have little chance of success.

Like all the other groups, they spend a few minutes inspecting their hut, taking measurements, checking for any metals that might impede the casting of spells. There’s an iron horseshoe hung on the door, thick and Muggle-wrought, which means that certain charms will need to be powered up or taken out of consideration entirely. Finally, Rey, Seff, and Tallie head inside, shutting the door behind them.

Although there’s only one piece of furniture—a table on the center of the floor with a lit oil lamp glowing brightly on top—the interior of the hut is still cramped with three of them in it. There are windows on all sides, which means that anyone within a considerable radius will be able to see the light burning, illuminating those inside.

Rey pulls out her aspen wand and casts an Extinguishing Charm. It does… exactly nothing.

“Probably one of Jyn’s enchanted flames,” says Seff. “We’ll need to deconstruct it.”

“That’ll take hours,” Tallie sniffs. “Let’s just disillusion the whole place and add an anti-intruder jinx.”

“Might be a bit tricky,” Seff ventures, “with the horseshoe and everything…”

Tallie rolls her eyes. “I thought you were in Ravenclaw. What good is being in the brainy house if you can’t even get a charm to stick to a bit of iron?”

Rey and Seff exchange glances. Tallie has been in an undeniably foul mood this week. Rey suspects that it has something to do with the fact that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.

Seff is a much kinder person than Rey is. He offers Tallie a conciliatory smile that doesn’t even seem forced. “Right. Let’s cast the anti-intruder jinx first, then we’ll disillusion.”

“Fine.” Tallie turns her nose up at him and flounces out the door.

“Sorry about her,” Rey mumbles to Seff as they trail after their groupmate. Tallie’s in her house, and she feels partially responsible.

Seff waves off her apology. “Just watch my back. Make sure I don’t end up getting hexed, yeah?” he quips.

“I will guard you with my life,” Rey solemnly vows.

They weave anti-intruder jinxes into the walls with no problem. A few of the other groups have the same idea; all around the expanded classroom, Rey glimpses flashes of similar magic at the corner of her eye, curling slowly through the huts’ facades. Seff and Tallie cast a nonverbal Leviosa on her and she is floated up to the roof of their hut; Rey bites back a smile as she remembers how much trouble the Levitation Charm had given all of them back in first year, when they were new to wands and incantations and they couldn’t get the cadence just right.

Feet dangling in the air, Rey lays down charm after charm on the hut’s shingles, her brow furrowed in concentration. Anti-intruder jinxes that repel anyone who isn’t her or Seff or Tallie, spells that would cause minor disfigurement on the unauthorized, or cause them to trip. Thirty minutes pass before she flashes her groupmates a thumbs up and they lower her back down to the ground.

Seff gets a jinx to cling to the front door after a couple of tries, by carefully sculpting the magic around the iron horseshoe. Tallie shoots him an ill-concealed I told you so look before she walks away to start disillusioning.

He stares after her, bemused. “I didn’t think I could get that to work, but then she challenged me,” he tells Rey.

“Imagine if you go ahead and ace your N.EW.T.s because of the stick up Tallissan Lintra’s bum,” Rey jokes.

“I heard that,” Tallie peevishly calls out. Duly chastised, Seff and Rey hurry toward her to help with the next round of charms.

Unfortunately, the disillusionment process doesn’t go as smoothly as they’d hoped. Most of the spells do manage to layer neatly over the existing jinxes and a good portion of their hut fades into the surroundings, rendered nigh invisible to the naked eye, but by the halfway mark of the time limit they are nowhere near close to fading the horseshoe or the enchanted oil lamp. Rey even tries physically removing both these things, but they refuse to budge.

“I think we may have to settle for impenetrable over undetectable,” she admits.

As it turns out, though, they can’t even have that. Jyn checks on their progress, casting a skeptical eye over the disillusioned roof and walls still containing a clearly visible flame and horseshoe that appear to be floating in the air, then she tells them to go inside.

They comply, Rey charming the door with the most powerful locking spell that she knows for good measure.

It takes Jyn less than three minutes to rip off all the disillusionment and counter both the locking spell and the anti-intruder jinxes. The door is blasted off its hinges and she barely stumbles over the threshold before her wand slices through the air as she cancels the Trip Jinx that Seff had so carefully crafted. Then she aims directly at Tallie.

“I’m a dark wizard, bang, you’re dead,” Jyn says in a flat tone. “Shore up your wards and redo your disillusionment, make sure it’s comprehensive, or come up with a new plan. You have an hour left.”

She leaves the hut with nary a backward glance, effortlessly casting a Mending Charm on the door on her way out. Tallie is as white as a sheet to have been on the business end of Jyn’s wand; she looks the way Rey suspects she herself must have looked after facing off with the manticore. And if Tallie had been in a bad mood before, it is most definitely not improved by having been held at wandpoint by their Charms professor and the very real possibility of failing this practical.

“Well,” she says icily, “that was a spectacular failure.”

Rey has to gnaw on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from snapping at Tallie that their whole strategy had been her bloody idea in the first place. Seff has the patience of a saint, though; he doesn’t seem even the slightest bit irritated.

“Tell you girls what,” he says, “why don’t I deconstruct the enchantment on the flame so we can extinguish it? Rey’s a dab hand at Transfiguration, she can figure something out for that horseshoe, I reckon.”

“Do we have time?” Rey asks doubtfully. “Maybe if we’d done all that at the beginning of the session, but now…”

“We’ll give it our best shot,” Seff says firmly. “C’mon, Lintra, you can help me—”

“Wait,” Rey blurts out. The wheels are turning in her head. Her two groupmates stop and fix quizzical gazes on her.

She’s thinking about last summer, the slew of weeks she’d spent holed up in her childhood bedroom, reading about the Patronus Charm and practicing it. During that same period, she’d come across another advanced spell that’s tailormade for this situation, but she’s never tried casting it and she’s pretty sure that Seff and Tallie haven’t, either.

Still, with an hour left on the clock, it might be worth a shot.

“We could perform the Fidelius Charm,” she says.

Seff blinks. “That’s really advanced magic. Have you done it before?”

“Well, no,” Rey admits, “but I know the theory. It would take up considerably less time than breaking an enchantment, transfiguring iron, and redoing all our wards.”

He rubs his chin, deep in thought. “You might be on to something…”

“Let me just stop the two of you right there,” says Tallie. “The Fidelius Charm requires intense concentration and powerful spellwork. There’s too much room for error. Three seventh-years couldn’t possibly accomplish it. Even if we had the whole day.”

“None of us assumed that we’d be able to conjure a Patronus, either,” Seff points out. “But Professor Solo believed that we could, didn’t he, he pushed us and we all made it work. And that’s what N.E.W.T. level is about, isn’t it—pushing ourselves?”

Rey’s heart skips a beat the way it always does whenever anyone mentions Ben, but it’s marginally easier to ignore it this time, in the face of her burgeoning excitement. She lays out the mechanics of the Fidelius Charm to her groupmates, writes down the incantations on a scrap of parchment, and demonstrates the various wand movements that are required, and by the end Seff is practically bouncing on his heels, eager to try it out.

“You can be the Secret Keeper,” he tells Tallie, who—although she still doesn’t seem entirely convinced by the new plan—is mollified at having been assigned the most important role.

Seff positions himself at Tallie’s right side while Rey goes over to her left. They rehearse; first the wand movement, then the incantations, then the wand movement again. It’s not long before that feeling comes over them—the feeling that is piercingly familiar to the older students after years of studying magic. The feeling that they’re as ready to cast as they’ll ever be.

Seff and Rey move as one, wrists circling and flicking, both a mirror image of the other’s. “Secretum Secretorum,” they intone in a melodic chorus. They have to time the incantation perfectly, each syllable needs to correspond with a specific twitch of their wand tips. It is the most exacting spellwork that has ever been demanded of them—or, rather, that they’ve demanded of themselves. Magic surges through Rey’s fingers and she can see an echoing flash in Seff’s eyes as their wands rise and fall one last time, pointing straight at Tallie’s heart.

Golden light spills out, seeping in through the blonde Gryffindor’s school robes. Into her soul. She guides the wand into the complicated motions that Rey had taught her, ending with a flourish that joins up where her groupmates are aiming.

“Incipe Incantatem,” Tallie murmurs.

More of the golden light streams out from her wand, coalescing with the blazing pool on her chest. The air crackles with magic. A charged wind comes out of nowhere, rippling the oil lamp’s flame.

The golden light disappears into Tallie. She gives a sharp gasp, then there is stillness, and silence.

“Did it work?” Seff wonders out loud. “How do you feel, Lintra?”

Tallie’s brow wrinkles. “I don’t feel any different, actually. At first it was somewhat sharp when the magic went in—like I was inhaling thorns. But now it’s just—nothing.”

“We won’t know if we pulled it off or not until we check outside,” Rey says. “C’mon.”

Once she and her groupmates step out the door, Rey turns to face the hut. It’s still there. It looks the same way it did several minutes ago.

A sense of crushing disappointment rises up inside her. She tells herself that this is how it’s supposed to work, she and Seff were the ones who cast the charm with Tallie, but still the doubts assail her. They’d failed. Ben had believed in her enough to encourage Jyn to put in a word with Cassian Andor at the British Auror Office, but now Jyn is going to see that Rey’s not up to snuff at all—

“Blimey!” Finn, who’s been assigned to the hut nearest Rey’s, lets out a long, slow whistle. “How’d you do that, then?”

Rey follows Finn’s line of sight. He’s staring directly at her hut, but he’s squinting. Like he can’t see it. Behind him, the students working with him have stopped what they’re doing and are staring as well, utter confusion on their faces, exclaiming among themselves about how Seff and Rey and Tallie’s hut had just—

“—bloody vanished into thin air, it did—”

“—then Niima, Lintra, and Hellin appeared from out of nowhere—”

“—oi, where’d you lot get off to, another dimension—?”

Rey meets Seff’s eyes, a wild, soaring triumph pounding in her ears as they beam at each other. They’d done it.

They’d hidden a secret inside someone’s soul.

Jyn returns to their group. She studies the hut—or what must be to her eyes the empty space where it once was—and a slight smile tugs at the corner of her lips. Rey is all nerves as she watches Jyn patrol the boundary of the hut, casting a variety of powerful detection charms and counterspells.

But nothing sticks. Eventually, Jyn slips her wand back into her arm holster.

“Fidelius?” she asks Rey, Seff, and Tallie. They nod. “Whose idea was that?”

“It was Rey’s idea, professor,” Seff answers.

Jyn’s smile widens. “Very good, Miss Niima. Great job, all. My husband and a few of his Aurors will be coming to Hogwarts for the seventh years’ career fair in June, I do hope that the three of you will have a chat with them.”

She walks away, leaving Rey giddy with the possibilities that have unfolded before her.

“But I don’t want to be an Auror,” Tallie grumbles, crossing her arms. “I’m on the healer track.”

“I don’t think Jyn was saying we had to be Aurors under pain of death or anything.” Seff peers at her carefully. “Are you all right? I’d have thought you’d cheer up a bit, seeing as we just aced our practical.”

Tallie sniffs, looking away from him.

Rey’s fed up with the other girl’s attitude. “She’s prickly because she doesn’t have a date for this Friday,” she tells Seff, ignoring Tallie when she narrows her eyes in a look of utter betrayal.

“This Friday?” Seff echoes, perplexed.

“Y’know—Valentine’s.” Rey punctuates the sentence with an eyeroll.

“Oh.” Seff turns back to Tallie, who has now resorted to trying to glare a hole into one of the classroom walls, a vicious scowl wreathing her face. “If that’s all, why don’t you be my Valentine, then?”

Rey blinks. Tallie blinks. They both gawk at Seff, open-mouthed.

“Excuse me?” Tallie’s shrill tone is caught halfway between indignance and surprise.

Seff shrugs. “I’m not big on it but I understand that day can make some people feel lonely, so if it will make you a little less—you know—” He gestures vaguely in Tallie’s direction, and Rey has to bite her tongue to refrain from supplying bitchy—“then we can have lunch on the fourteenth. I have a great spot in mind.”

Tallie looks so outraged that Rey almost expects her to slap Seff. But when seconds pass without that ever happening, Rey subjects her roommate’s expression to closer scrutiny—and it dawns on her that Tallie is not outraged. Her features are screwed up, yes, but her face is pink all over, her blue eyes glittering with suspicion. And… something else.

The effect is not dissimilar to a cornered Pygmy Puff, and Rey will forever wonder if this is what crosses Seff’s mind, if this is what makes him laugh all of a sudden and regard Tallie with a mixture of exasperation and something that could very nearly be fondness. His easy grin only grows broader as her own priggish frown deepens.

It's not long before Rey starts to feel as much of a third wheel as she sometimes does around Finn and Rose.

“A great spot?” Tallie finally scoffs. “It had better not be the library.”

Seff holds her gaze, an unrepentant sort of humor lurking beneath his calm façade. “’Course not. I don’t take girls to the library until the third date.”

Tallie stiffens. And Rey knows that it’s an automatic reaction; Keyan Farlander and his friends—the people that Tallie had spent most of her time at Hogwarts with until recently—are mean, their jokes sinking in like barbs.

But there is nothing malicious in Seff’s teasing. After a while, Tallie’s posture relaxes.

“Fine,” she says crisply. “Lunch on Friday, then.”

Rey’s eyes dart from one groupmate to the other and back again.

Huh.

✨✨✨

As it turns out, Rey, Seff, and Tallie aren’t the only ones who managed to find a way around the usual detection methods. Rose’s group pulled off the Fidelius Charm as well, while Korr Sella guided hers through the intricate process of making their hut Unplottable. Meanwhile, Finn and Kazuda and Jysella have accomplished what is quite possibly the most thorough disillusionment Rey has ever seen; they successfully broke the enchantment on the oil lamp’s flame and transfigured the iron horseshoe into silver, making it more conducive for charmwork. Every single one of the groups that weren’t able to provide total undetectability nevertheless fashioned nigh impenetrable layers of anti-intruder jinxes; Jyn actually breaks a sweat attempting to surmount the wards placed by Jessika Pava, Reeqo Swen, and Doran Sarkin-Tainer.

Such a display of competence earns the seventh years the very rare sight of their Charms professor practically beaming by the end of the session. “Starting the calendar year with a bang, I see.” Jyn has her hands on her hips as she addresses the class. She looks proud of them. “Lots of innovative techniques used today. Have you collectively learned the value of reading ahead, then? But—that wouldn’t explain this newfound finesse in spellwork, I don’t think.”

Bazel Warv raises his hand tentatively. “It’s ‘cause of Defense Against the Dark Arts, professor. We’ve been doing all sorts of advanced magic. Reckon it carried over.”

A gleam of satisfaction lights up Jyn’s green eyes. “Knew it was the right decision for Headmaster Kenobi to inject some new blood into the curriculum.”

Rey looks down at her scuffed shoes as she fights back a smile. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that her and her classmates’ triumph is Ben’s as well—but, come to think of it, why wouldn’t it be? He has pushed them harder than all the other D.A.D.A. teachers they’ve had. He has challenged them, time and time again, and in doing so he has made them more confident and more resourceful. Quicker on their feet.

She can’t wait to see him later and thank him properly.

✨✨✨

Of course, Rey’s idea of properly thanking Ben Solo mostly involves snogging the living daylights out of him as soon as they enter the privacy of the Room of Requirement and the door creaks shut behind them.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he murmurs once they’ve broken apart in obeisance to the human body’s frankly insufferable demand for oxygen, “but what brought this on?”

His large fingers brush a warm trail of languid caresses down her back as she recounts what the class had been able to do in Charms that day. What he’d made it possible for them to do. What Jyn had said about Obi-Wan bringing him on to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts being a good call.

Given the stern arrangement of features that Ben normally presents to the world, he is positively incandescent before Rey’s even finished talking. “All of you did well.” His faint grin is almost boyish in its shyness as he deflects the compliment on his teaching abilities. “The Fidelius Charm—I’m very impressed, Rey.”

“I doubt we could’ve mustered the discipline for it if you hadn’t trained us how to concentrate for things like wandless magic and nonverbal Patronus conjuration,” Rey says even as she preens at his praise.

For a moment it seems as though he’s going to kiss her again—and she is so ready for it that she’s already pursing her lips—but then he takes a step back, only sparing the time to give the jut of her hip one last squeeze.

That’s when Rey notices that the Room of Requirement is—different.

It hadn’t really registered at first because she’d been so preoccupied sticking her tongue down Ben’s throat. Instead of the log cabin, they’re in a classroom that is empty in every sense of the word save for a clock on the wall and two desks facing each other in the middle of the room, a foot apart.

Huh, Rey thinks for the second time that day. She’s a little puzzled, but also intrigued. Is this some new fantasy of his? Well, she’s more than willing to play along…

Ben leads her to the two desks, then gestures at the one to his right. “Please take a seat.”

“Yes, sir,” Rey purrs. Her movements are measured as she makes herself comfortable in the chair, crossing her legs and leaning an elbow on the armrest. Her pleated gray skirt rides up her thighs. She’d remembered to wear decent knickers today.

Ben sits down at the desk opposite hers. He stares at her, intense and penetrating. She looks at him through her lashes, squirming a little from the anticipation of it all—

“At the most fundamental level, Occlumency is the act of closing one’s mind,” Ben says. His deep voice is clipped and academic, the way it always is during lectures. “To be more specific, it’s the act of closing one’s mind against Legilimency, which in turn is the act of navigating the layers of the mind and correctly interpreting findings. A good Occlumens can prevent a Legilimens from accessing their thoughts and feelings. For our purposes, however, Occlumency can also be used to compartmentalize emotions—keep a straight face, so to speak—and shut out distractions while we are performing important tasks… Is everything all right?”

“Yes.” The word is muffled into Rey’s palms, as she’s buried her face in her hands.

Ben’s brow creases. “It’s just that you suddenly—”

“It’s nothing.” Rey straightens up again once she’s gotten her embarrassment under control. “Please continue.”

He hesitates. “We can reschedule if you’re tired—”

“I’m not,” she says thinly. “Do go on.”

“Very well, then. So.” Ben clears his throat. “Let’s start with the basics. Clear your mind.” She gives him a blank look and he elaborates. “Empty it of your thoughts and your emotions. Try to think of nothing. It’s similar to concentrating on channeling your magic to summon your wand. Only, this time, you’re using your magic to banish anything that encroaches on the null space that you’re forming in your head.”

“Okay.” Rey folds her hands together, resting them on the wooden desk. She spends the next few minutes staring at the far wall over Ben’s shoulder, assembling that blank mental space. Her magic pushes away each stray thought that comes creeping in. It’s almost like meditation, she silently muses—

“Yes, I suppose that it is,” Ben drawls. He’s lazily twirling his blackthorn wand in his fingers as if he’s just finished casting a spell. Had he been aiming at her? She hadn’t noticed.

“Did—did you just read my mind?” she sputters.

“I wouldn’t call it mind-reading.” He looks his long nose down at her. “It’s not as though thoughts are written on the inside of the skull. But, as I previously mentioned, the human mind consists of complex layers that those who have mastered Legilimency can delve into and glean information from.”

“Sounds like mind-reading to me,” Rey mumbles.

Ben shoots her A Look, and she automatically sits a little straighter, clamping her mouth shut. If she makes a muck of this lesson or if she continues to talk back, maybe—maybe she can get spanked again—

Shit.

She can’t allow stuff like that to occupy her thoughts, especially when Ben is reading—er, delving into the complex layers of her mind.

“Let’s try again,” he says.

Rey gives the next round her all. She concentrates on nothing else but clearing her head. She attacks the task with such fierceness that she’s barely even breathing. She does this for a very long time.

The main problem is that it’s incredibly boring.

There are so many other things that they could be doing right now.

More snogging. Shagging. Hell, they could even just be talking—perhaps over a nice midnight snack.

“Now that you mention it, I’m a little peckish.”

Rey jolts. Ben’s lounging at his desk, the blackthorn wand pointed halfheartedly in her direction like it had cost him zero effort to pluck the thought from her brain.

She glares at him. His features soften. He leans forward slightly.

“How about this… Imagine that it’s the end of summer and you’re packing your suitcase for Hogwarts,” Ben suggests. “Your school robes, your books, your jeans, your sweaters, your quills, those amusing bras with little cartoon animals on them…”

“You’re terrible!” Rey bursts out, torn between laughter and horror.

Ben smirks. It does funny things to her heart.

“Can you picture it clearly?” he asks, and she nods. She’s not a tidy person by any means, but packing to go back to Hogwarts is the highlight of every summer that she’s spent at the council flat in the Muggle world with her parents. She can almost taste the joy of it.

“Good. Now, do the same thing with your thoughts,” Ben instructs. “Visualize an empty suitcase and pack your thoughts and memories into it the same way you’d arrange your personal effects.”

“Which thoughts and memories?”

“Anything. Everything. Whatever occurs to you.” His dark eyes flash with a hint of mischief. “Whatever you don’t want me to find out.”

He hits a little bit too close to home with that. A chill goes down her spine. It had been an extremely bad idea to start Occlumency training now that she’s frequently wondering if she’s in love with him.

It’s… humiliating, is what it is. They’ve never talked about—any of that.

Rey’s next stab at occluding is born largely from panic. She takes as many thoughts and memories about Ben as she can and folds each one into small pieces, the smallest piece possible. These are the first things that she puts into her suitcase. On top of them she piles all the other thoughts and memories as they occur to her, folding them, rolling them up, tucking some into others like socks. She doesn’t stop until her suitcase is full and Ben is buried at the very bottom, hidden underneath layers upon layers of her life.

When she glances at the clock, it’s to discover that more than an hour has passed. Her mind is as clear as crystal, there are none of the usual niggling musings and concerns floating around to bother her. It’s the most centered she’s ever felt.

Ben casts Legilimency again. He holds the spell far longer this time, then lowers his wand, the expression on his face every bit as pleased and proud as Jyn’s had been in Charms class earlier.

“You really are something else, Miss Niima,” he rasps. “You’re the quickest study I’ve ever met.” He’s all business again while she’s still glowing at his praise. “I believe that this is sufficient for a first lesson. Until next time, practice packing your mental suitcase as often as possible. Whenever something troubles or distracts you, toss it in there and zip it away.”

“Noted.” Rey worries at her bottom lip, There’s something bothering her… “Y’know, I didn’t feel you in my head at all. Is Legilimency always this painless?”

Ben chuckles. It has a humorless quality to it. “Hardly. What I did was basically just peeking inside your suitcase, then pulling away. If a skilled Legilimens were looking for something in particular inside your head, they would rummage around. It’s a process that can take hours. It will hurt.”

Rey has always been very good at throwing caution to the wind when it comes to magic. A new frontier has just opened before her and she’s loath to turn back so soon. “Could you try it on me? Not a full-blown mental attack or some such,” she hurries to add because he’s already shaking his head, “just—maybe push a little and teach me how to keep you out.”

“Absolutely not.” The line of Ben’s mouth is firm. “That is for another lesson in the future. When you’re more adept at building up your defenses.”

“But I can handle it now,” she insists.

“No. Even if I go slowly, it’s still an invasive procedure and you might experience some discomfort if I go too hard… Yes, I heard it as soon as I said it.” His tone turns sour. “Kindly wipe that smirk off your face.”

“Sorry.” She giggles. Then she goes back to wheedling. “C’mon, Ben, I could be kidnapped by dark wizards tomorrow and they’ll read my mind and they’ll discover a weakness in Hogwarts’ defenses and sneak in.”

“I highly doubt that will happen,” he snorts. But there must be a part of him that realizes that she won’t let this go. He must see it on her face. He issues an exasperated sigh. “Fine, but we’re going to do this my way. No complaints.”

“Not a word,” Rey promises.

Without standing up, Ben transfigures his desk into a cozy-looking armchair. Then he looks at her and pats his thigh.

By now, she knows what that means. She goes over to him and sits on his lap and he turns her to face him. If not for the promise she’d just made about not complaining, she would have gotten in a jibe along the lines of, “Is this how the dark wizards are going to interrogate me, then?”

She’s not really complaining, anyway. He smells so nice and he is so warm, and up close like this she has a front-row seat to the constellation of beauty marks on his pale face and the way his brown eyes show his emotions.

Ben angles the tip of his blackthorn wand an inch away from her temple while his free arm curves protectively around the small of her back. “I will attempt to discern what you ate for lunch. Pack it away in your suitcase,” he instructs in a gravelly voice. “Get your wand out and aim it at my heart. Feel free to use any sort of repelling charm once you sense that I’m close to accessing the relevant memory.” He considers for a moment. “Not the Stunning Spell, though—that is not how I want you to give me a heart attack.”

“How else would I be able to… oh.” She giggles again. He grimaces at her and then leans in to gently bump his nose against hers for the briefest of seconds.

Ben gives Rey time to concentrate. She’d had two egg mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch, as well as tomato soup and far more jacket potatoes than she’s willing to admit. She crams the memory into her suitcase along with all the others. She doesn’t see how he could ever find it.

“Legilimens,” he whispers in her ear, verbalizing it so that she will have more opportunity to prepare. More opportunity to brace herself.

True to his word, this casting of the spell is far less subtle than his previous ones. She feels him break into her mind instantly. It is… not painful, not the way he goes about it. But it’s unsettling. She’s never had somebody else in her head before and it’s like there are eyes inside her brain, scanning it. Searching for what she’d eaten for—

No. She can’t think about it. If she thinks about it, it will come to the surface.

Ben zeroes in on a pile of memories from today. The exact same pile where she’d hidden what he’s looking for. How had he done it, there are so many things inside her suitcase, her whole life is there—

She flinches.

He pounces.

And it’s as though Rey is watching a movie featuring the events of this day in reverse. She sees herself moving through the Hogwarts corridors under the invisibility cloak after lights out. Then there is dinner in the Great Hall, Finn laughing uproariously when Elliver charms a pea to shoot up Gandris’ nose.

“How very mature,” Ben says wryly.

Only—Rey’s not certain whether he physically says it, or if it’s all just in her head. He’s watching the movie with her. He’s turning back the clock. Soon he will reach her memory of lunch. She attempts to push him out and zip up the suitcase, but he’s wedged his way in and he refuses to budge. Her fingers tighten around her wand.

Quidditch practice. Ben makes a small disapproving noise low in the back of his throat as she does a flip in the air. Rey snickers and gamely tries to snatch the pile of memories away, but he has his hands on it now, he keeps looking and looking, rifling through thoughts and images and sensations like they were a deck of cards. Her head is starting to hurt, she can feel the stirrings of pain gnawing at the edges of her skull.

Charms class. Jyn congratulating the seventh years on their work. Seff asking Tallie to be his Valentine…

And the thing is—

The thing is, one’s memories are interconnected, the human consciousness forever correlating, forever following patterns and forming links. And Rey’s Occlumency is already starting to fray apart, her mind unused to being searched.

The Gryffindor common room rises up from the whirlwind of Rey’s memories. She’s staring down at the chessboard while her housemates talk about the upcoming fourteenth of February.

Even if the flowers and the cards and the telegrams can be anonymous, she already knows that Ben wouldn’t deign to send her any of them. When he’s not snogging or shagging her, he is a cranky, no-nonsense man who’s ten years her senior. It’s a given that he won’t have any plans to so much as acknowledge Valentine’s.

But there is a small part of her that wants…

Rey cries out. It is instinct to protect this thought of hers in all its vulnerability. “Protego!”

Ben grunts as the Shield Charm slams into him, pushing him out of Rey’s head. But her desperation has made her channel too much force into the spell, and suddenly—

—suddenly the movie of her memories vanishes, and she is spiraling into his mind—

Ben’s office. He’s having tea with Obi-Wan. “Love is in the air!” the headmaster cheerfully declares. “Are you looking forward to Valentine’s Day as much as I am, Professor Solo?”

Ben’s lips curl into a sneer. “Valentine’s is without a doubt the silliest holiday to have ever been conceived.”

“Come now, Ben, I know there’s a romantic lurking underneath that thunderous mien,” Obi-Wan says with a chuckle. “Is there no one that you wish to send a hairy dwarf to, singing songs about how their eyes are limpid pools?”

“No one at all, headmaster,” Ben responds flatly. “I have neither the time nor the inclination for any of that nonsense.”

Rey chokes on a sob as she wrenches herself out of the memory. The empty classroom comes back into focus. The color has drained from Ben’s face even as he holds her in his arms.

At first, the sight of him is blurred by her tears, which she rapidly blinks away.

Then she scrambles off his lap, her cheeks burning from mortification, her heart scraped raw.

“Rey—” He moves as if to grab her, but she steps out of his reach.

“I’m—it’s—” The words crack on her tongue. She doesn’t even have any idea what it is that she wants to say. She takes her jumble of emotions and throws them haphazardly into the suitcase. Focusing, focusing.

She speaks again only once she has a tenuous handle on her thoughts. Her words come out a little wobbly but she soldiers on. “Don’t pay it any mind. I know that Valentine’s Day is stupid. You and I agree on that.” She tries not to flinch as Ben continues to stare at her, looking like she’s wounded him even though she’s the one bleeding out. “It’s just—y’know—capitalism and advertising… mass market… I’ve never had one before, is all, but it’s stupid, yeah…”

Right. She should probably stop babbling. Rey takes a deep breath and pastes on a small smile. “I’d better get going, it’s awfully late.”

Ben opens his mouth as if to say something, but Rey’s already turning on her heel and fleeing out the door, carrying with her whatever bits of her pride are left to salvage.