41. Chapter 41

The last weekend of June brings with it the annual career fair that has been a proud tradition at Hogwarts ever since Obi-Wan Kenobi assumed the post of headmaster decades ago.

Rey can’t think of a single person in her year who isn’t pleased by this opportunity to take a break from revising for N.E.W.T.s—except maybe for Aleson Gray, who doesn’t seem like he’d ever be pleased by much of anything. He hasn’t exactly been spending a lot of time with her since the night of the deathday party, but he has been roping her into casual conversation during the classes that they have together and every time their paths cross in the hallways.

When it comes to him, there’s a part of her that’s—fascinated, for lack of a better term. Before Aleson, she’d never had a lot of contact with her schoolmates who are from traditional pureblood families. There’s a millennia-old magical island in Lan Ha Bay that’s named after House Tico, but Rose is about as untraditional a pureblood as it’s possible to be, perhaps even more so.

Of course, Rey has good reasons to steer clear of Aleson’s ilk, but so far there doesn’t appear to be a single blood supremacist bone in his body. She suspects that that’s the sort of thing that would be too much effort for him. He just seems to… saunter his way through life, always disdainful, always unconcerned, and it’s the type of energy that she finds welcome during the leadup to N.E.W.T.s when everyone else is so frazzled that even Seff had needed to be dosed with Calming Draught when he couldn’t get his hare statue to transfigure into an actual live hare and had tried to smash it to pieces with a conjured hammer.

There had been no need for Seff to go to the hospital wing. Like all of the other professors, Mon Mothma has taken to keeping a supply of Calming Draught on hand for the seventh-year class.

The only thing that Rey finds disconcerting about her newly-forged acquaintance with Aleson is the fact that it’s not only Tallie and Jess but also Finn and Rose who tease her mercilessly.

“When you marry him, you have to start going by your full first name,” Rose declares after one Charms lecture, once Aleson has strolled out of earshot. “Otherwise, you’ll be Rey Gray, and that just won’t do.”

“When I marry him?” Rey echoes in disbelief. “That’s—it’s not like that in the slightest—”

Rose ignores her. “First Seff Hellin and now Aleson Gray, my word, this really has been your year, hasn’t it—”

“Don’t forget Professor Solo, who’s in love with her,” Korr Sella calls out as she and her friends walk past them, and everyone laughs and Rey suddenly just wants to evaporate into fine mist; alternatively, to lock herself in the nearest bathroom and cry.

By the time she manages to Occlude enough that she doesn’t do this thing, Finn is in protective mode. “Dunno if I want our Rey marrying into some snooty posh family,” he grumbles as they head to the Great Hall for lunch. “What’s she to talk about with her in-laws, yeah?”

“The Grays aren’t that snooty,” Rose argues, continuing to ignore Rey’s sputtered protests. “Aleson’s got an aunt in werewolf rights, doesn’t he, his mother’s cousin’s wife—”

And so it goes. And no one has any idea of the hurt that Rey is nurturing in her heart. What had once been her secret love is now her secret ache, and for all that she knows that there’s nothing going on between her and Aleson, part of her is shameless, part of her has been waiting on tenterhooks ever since the aftermath of the deathday party for Ben to give any indication of the explosive jealousy that had once consumed him, that had once made her feel like she was the most desirable creature on earth.

But no such luck. In class, he’s Professor Solo again to her. Never intolerably mean, never the least bit warm.

Their eyes do meet sometimes, while he’s lecturing, but he’s always quick to look away and that brief split-second of contact never fails to bring with it a certain hauntedness.

Hauntedness in the knowledge of what she’d almost done to protect him—and what he had done to protect her.

They are conspirators. And she spends her days missing him and being angry with him and wondering how she can fix things and never wanting to because sod Ben Solo.

Rey is therefore even more excited for the career fair than the other students in her year are. It’s a welcome distraction. It’s a way to temporarily take her mind off of not only her studies but also the sorry mess that is her so-called love life.

However, it doesn’t quite start on a promising note with regard to that last bit, because on Friday—the night before the first day of the career fair—Ben is sitting with the other professors when Rey trudges into the Great Hall for dinner.

Still a little frayed at the edges from having been in his class earlier that morning, Rey wants to rail at the unfairness of it all. She wants to march up to him and take him to task because, now that she’s actually thankful that he never joins the rest of the school for meals, he does—

But she eventually realizes why he’d showed up. And wearing formal black robes, to boot.

There’s always a welcome dinner every term for the career fair’s guests. The High Table has been magically expanded to accommodate more people. Some of them are strangers, but there are some faces that Rey recognizes from the previous years.

She takes her seat with the other Gryffindors, who are all whispering excitedly among themselves. Jannah, in fact, has a hard time staying in her seat.

“That’s Bodhi Rook!” Jannah gushes to anyone who will listen, pointing at an olive-skinned wizard of lithe build and striking features who’s sitting beside Professor Erso-Andor and chatting with her with all the ease of an old friendship. “He’s the new Keeper for the National Team, he is! He broke the record for most saves in the British and Irish League in only his third year of going pro and he’s held on and added to it all this time—they call him Bodhi ‘the Hands of Merlin’ Rook—!”

As the seventh-year Gryffindors try to calm Jannah down before she storms the High Table for Bodhi’s autograph, Rey’s gaze keeps flitting to said table. On Jyn’s other side is her husband Cassian, the U.K.’s highest-ranking Auror and one of its most powerful wizards. There’s also Chirrut Imwe, the Seer with an unmatched accuracy rate of 101 percent who shows up to every career fair to tap potential apprentices; next to him is a stocky, stone-faced man completely covered from the neck down in protective dragon-hide gear who does not seem pleased to be attending a career fair. There are also healers in the lime green robes of St. Mungo’s, stuffy-looking lawyer types, witches and wizards with the kind of huge spectacles that scream either academic or accountant or inventor, suave businesspeople, and so much more.

Rey tells herself that she’s merely interested in the newcomers, but the truth is that her eyes keep darting to Ben across what’s between them—a distance in every sense of the word. It has never seemed so insurmountable before. He looks more remote now than he’s ever had since the day they met.

“What’re those uniforms?” Finn asks, indicating a group of people dressed in trench-coats of shiny brown leather.

“Oh!” Tallie snaps her fingers after a moment’s thought. “Those are MACUSA Aurors!”

“Americans!” Jess gasps.

It’s as though a jolt of electricity runs through the nearby students at Tallie’s words. Even Rey’s interest is piqued. Past career fairs had occasionally had over people from international companies with branches in Britain, but never representatives from the United States’ Magical Congress.

And they’re Aurors.

Ben’s former coworkers?

He doesn’t seem to be paying any of the trench-coated contingent any mind. However, as Rey watches, one of them leans over and says something to him. A woman—a stunningly beautiful woman, at that, with a curtain of fine hair that’s so blonde it’s almost white.

Whatever it is that she’s said, the corner of Ben’s mouth lifts in a faint smile.

Rey blinks.

Her stomach turns over.

It’s nothing, she thinks, staring at Ben as he replies to the woman, who tosses her amazing hair over her shoulder and—giggles. It’s nothing. Obviously, they used to work together and he’s just catching up. Obviously.

Maybe.

Before Rey can dwell too much on this strange and unsettling new development, the last of the students trickle into the Great Hall and settle down. As the main doors swing shut, Obi-Wan rises to his feet. “A pleasant evening to all!” he booms, instantly commanding everyone’s attention. “This is a special night, because it is the eve of our esteemed institution’s annual career fair and because I have the honor of introducing our dear visitors, who have come from all over Britain and the world to assist our graduating batch in determining where their steps will take them after they leave Hogwarts’ hallowed halls! I do hope that you lot will join me in giving our venerable guests the warmest of welcomes!”

Obi-Wan spends the next several minutes reeling off the names and credentials of each visitor to rounds of polite applause. Applause that gets less polite, devolving instead into raucous cheers, for Cassian, Bodhi, Chirrut, and the man in dragon-hide who appropriately enough turns out to be a dragonologist from Romania named Baze Malbus and had brought along one of his full-grown Ukrainian Ironbellies. The students are beside themselves at that; despite the funk that she’s in, Rey hoots and claps along with the rest, the heaviness in her chest lifting somewhat at the thought of seeing a real live dragon tomorrow. As one, she and Finn look over knowingly at the Hufflepuff table; Rose is beaming, fit to burst.

Baze Malbus glares at the ecstatic Hogwarts populace with such ferocity that Bodhi elbows him in the ribs. This does not in any way alleviate Baze’s glare.

“Lastly, but certainly not leastly,” Obi-Wan continues, a twinkle in his eye, “I am very proud to announce that, this year, for the first time ever in the history of our school, we have guests joining us for our little career fair in their official capacity as observers from the Department of Aurors of the Magical Congress of the United States! They are here to scout potential recruits for a bold new initiative—an exchange of ideas, skills, knowledge, culture, and techniques—a joint Auror training program to be undertaken by the British Ministry of Magic and MACUSA!”

“Wonder how they’ll scout us,” Finn muses as he and Rey join in the cheers and the clapping that’s now more enthusiastic than ever before. “I mean, the whole weekend we’ll only be going from tent to tent, won’t we, bit daft for them to just be walking around looking at us walking around.”

Rey’s brow creases. When put like that—she’s just about to tell Finn that she has no idea, either, but then Obi-Wan is speaking again. Giving more details.

“This program will be open exclusively to Hogwarts’ best and brightest. There is no application process, select seventh years will be invited contingent on their performance tomorrow and, of course, on their ability to meet the stringent N.E.W.T. requirements.” A hush falls over the Great Hall, and Rey trades confused glances with everyone else at the Gryffindor table. Performance? “After graduation, the chosen few—if they decide that this path for them—will undergo basic Auror training in London for six months and then proceed to train for another six months—” Obi-Wan pauses for dramatic effect—“in New York!”

Rey had not thought it possible for her batch and her batch alone to achieve a level of fanfare that would shake the very rafters of the Great Hall. But it’s happening now. She nearly gets her eye poked out by Finn and Gandriss and Elliver’s flailing elbows, but that is the least of her concerns at the moment because her gaze is darting wildly to Ben like she’s the moth to his flame, the compass to his true north.

He's already looking at her. All the way from the High Table. The world stops and dims and grows muffled and dull, and it’s only just the two of them.

Ben’s hiding behind his Occlumency as usual. His expression is blank, but he is meeting her eyes, and Rey almost believes that if not for his mental walls he would be staring at her with the same jumble of shock and regret that she’s feeling now.

Six months in New York.

Six months in Ben’s second home after Nevada.

If Ben’s plan is to return to the States after this school year, this would have been a way for Rey to see him again, to stretch out the time that they have together. If she were to be recruited into this program, their story wouldn’t have been predestined to end at her graduation, which had always been one of her biggest and most secret fears that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to share with him.

But it’s all would haves and could haves and should haves.

Because their story has already ended.

And she doesn’t even know if Ben would have been open to continuing their relationship away from Hogwarts, anyway.

Even now, even after all these months, she doesn’t know if he’d considered it a relationship at all. Or, at least, one worth pursuing.

Rey will never know any of these things. And it’s too late to ask.

So many words left unsaid.

“As for exactly what kind of performance will be expected from all interested seventh years tomorrow—” Obi-Wan’s voice sounds like it’s emanating from a long way off, from lightyears and universes away—“I’ll let it be a surprise, then, shall I?” He chuckles as the aforementioned seventh years release a collective groan. “Come now, the best and the brightest thrive under spontaneity! And pressure! Now, allow me to introduce our Professor Solo’s countrymen…”

At the mention of his name, Ben’s gaze drops from Rey’s and he seems to shrink just the slightest bit into his seat, rendered uncomfortable by the attention.

It’s a good thing, Rey thinks, that this attention doesn’t stay on him for long; Obi-Wan starts calling on the American Aurors one by one and they quickly captivate the crowd.

Then it’s the blonde woman’s turn, and suddenly nothing is good—for Rey, at least.

Everyone else appears to enjoy it.

The lads, especially.

Her name is Tahiri Veila. She has a willowy figure and delicate porcelain features and she rises to her feet to acknowledge Hogwarts’ welcome with an effortless, unruffled grace that Rey can never hope to achieve in this lifetime or the next. She glows in the light of thousands of candles, her eyes a dark jade hue, smoky and alluring.

“Blimey,” Tharandon murmurs, “that’s the most gorgeous lady I’ve ever seen…”

“I think she’s a Veela,” Gandris whispers, to several nods of agreement.

The Veela are magical near-humans native to the Bulgarian forests, hypnotically seductive, inspiring their admirers to even the most foolish and dangerous of feats just to impress them. Rey makes note of Tahiri’s white-gold hair and moon-bright skin and she surmises that Gandris might not be completely off-base. There is no way that just anyone can look like this.

Rey turns to Finn. Her best friend is staring slack-jawed at Tahiri, and it is with a burst of annoyance that Rey kicks him under the table.

“Ow!” Finn reaches down to rub his shin. “I love Rose,” he says defensively.

Rey rolls her eyes. And, although she hates herself for it, she cranes her neck in Ben’s direction again.

He hasn’t deigned to applaud any of the guests; thus far, he’s made every appearance of giving his undivided focus to each introduction along with the vaguest of impressions that there are other things that he’d rather be doing with his time. It’s actually kind of a talent.

On a surface level, he’s not treating Tahiri any differently.

But Rey is paranoid. Here she is, ascribing some type of meaning to the way he looks at the blonde Auror with impassive eyes. Here she is, trying to read his every movement and every infrequent tic of his face from across the space between them. The space which carries the glamoured scar that only she knows about. Nausea curls through her gut.

Once the last of the visitors has been accounted for, Rey expects that the feast will promptly commence. However, Obi-Wan doesn’t give the signal for this to happen.

Instead, he glances at Ben with a mischievous little smile before turning to face the students once more.

“Of course, all of our guests are special,” says the headmaster, “but this evening we are also very fortunate to welcome another observer, who has surfaced from his well-deserved retirement to join his fellow MACUSA Aurors!”

Rey watches as understanding dawns on Ben’s face, what can only be described as sheer horror breaking through the walls of his Occlumency.

“It took some persuading to tear this individual away from his beloved Australian Outback,” Obi-Wan informs the rapt yet mystified audience, “but, in the end, he could not say no to an old friend… or pass up the chance to see his nephew!”

Rey sits bolt upright in her chair as the realization hits.

“Some of you may recognize him,” Obi-Wan tells the crowd. “Those of you who grew up in wizarding households have most likely already heard the story from the other side of the pond—the story of the young Auror who defeated the Dark Lord Palpatine in a rousing duel—”

“No way!” Jess suddenly bursts out. She scans the Great Hall frantically, as do several other students.

“—but what I’m sure not a lot of you know—” Obi-Wan is so very clearly enjoying himself, which Rey can’t begrudge him for as there must not be a lot of excitement in running the same school for over fifty years, now that she thinks about it—“is that, tonight, our Professor Solo is reunited not only with his countrymen but also his uncle! Everyone, may I present—”

The lights dim. The main doors of the Great Hall fly wide open with a loud bang, admitting into the vast chamber streams of bright, multicolored smoke. At the center of the swirling mists is the silhouette of a figure wearing a pointy hat, baggy robes, and a long, flowing cape, wielding a staff.

For a moment, Obi-Wan appears to be just as shocked as everyone else by such an entrance, but he recovers magnificently.

“Luke Skywalker!” he announces.

The lighting in the Great Hall reverts to normal and the smoke dissipates to reveal the mysterious figure standing at the threshold in all his glory.

Luke is quite possibly the most unkempt man that Rey has ever seen. He has wavy, matted hair and a thick, tangled beard that are that certain shade of brownish gray which hints at a blond youth. His eyes are blue on his sunburned, weathered face. His robes are—well, they must have been formal dress in a previous life, but now they’re patched in several places, a dingy purple color patterned with faded silver stars that match his pointy hat and the cape.

He doesn’t look like a hero who’d defeated any sort of dark lord. He looks like a wizard who’d spent the last several decades living in the wilderness wrestling koala bears before he dug up his old dress robes from out of a hole in the earth and moseyed over to Hogwarts.

Rey remembers what Ben had told her about his uncle and she concedes that it’s not far-off to presume that that’s exactly what had happened.

Still, there’s a solemnity about Luke, a quiet dignity that echoes that of Leia Organa…

Then he raises his chin as if to better take in the Great Hall and everyone who’s gazing upon him, and in the burnished radiance of the candles Rey catches a light in his blue eyes that’s a bit—well, mad—

“NITWIT! BLUBBER! ODDMENT! TWEAK!” Luke screams at the top of his lungs. Then he raises his arms to the starry ceiling, and hundreds—no, thousands—of Chocolate Frogs come streaming out of his grimy sleeves, quickly swarming the House tables.

The Great Hall devolves into chaos as students laugh and fervently applaud and try to catch as many Chocolate Frogs as they can. Rey’s much too frozen in place by the fact that this is Ben’s erstwhile uncle, but Finn grabs a handful of the leaping confections out of the air and stuffs them into her pockets with the determination of someone who’s been ordered by his girlfriend to make sure that Rey eats.

“You lot cannot be serious!” Tallie shrieks at her fellow Gryffindors. “Those came out of his clothes!”

Before her words can even fall on deaf ears, they’re drowned out by Luke’s booming cackle as he makes his way to the High Table amidst a sea of candy amphibians that are clambering over the tiles and scaling the walls and hopping amidst the silverware while more than a few professors and guests look on, scandalized. He exchanges high-fives with an extremely amused-seeming Obi-Wan, then he goes over to Chewbacca and tries his darnedest to lift him out of his chair in a bodily hug, and then he turns to Ben—

“Well, well, well!” Luke flashes a wide, maniacally gleeful grin. “If it isn’t my naughty nephew! Found a mountain ash in Tasmania that reminded me of you, all tall and glum! I named it Benjie Boy!”

Ben slumps slightly forward, resting his elbows on the table, and he buries his face in his hands.

Rey has to admit that it’s very funny. She takes a wry sort of satisfaction in his predicament as she bites into one of the Chocolate Frogs.

✨✨✨

At first, it had been hard to tell what the general consensus is among the seventh years as to the thing to be most excited about: the dragon, the joint training program, Bodhi Rook, or the fact that Luke Skywalker is Professor Solo’s uncle.

“Man leads a charmed life, doesn’t he,” Finn had remarked during the feast. “MACUSA president’s son, hero’s nephew—why’s he even a teacher?”

“I don’t think he’s that blessed,” Tallie had sniffed, casting one last censorious glance at the High Table. “Not with a barmy old codger for a relative.”

Rey hadn’t been able to contribute much to the discussion. For one thing, Ben’s life has been far from blessed but she can’t exactly tell her friends why she knows that. For another, he and Tahiri had spent most of dinner talking and Rey hadn’t been able to concentrate on a whole lot else. She’d been glad for the feast to be over so she could flee from such a sight.

Now that the seventh-year Gryffindors are ensconced in the cheerful scarlet-and-gold trappings of their common room, the joint training program turns out to be the main subject of conversation.

“Think it makes a lot of sense,” says Elliver. “Evil wizards are getting smarter, going more international, y’know? America’s last two dark lords were European, weren’t they? MACUSA and the Ministry probably want to tighten their nets.”

“If you lot get recruited, would you accept?” Jess asks.

There’s a lengthy silence as everyone mulls it over. They’re all uncharacteristically serious.

Rey thinks that this might quite possibly be the first time that it’s sinking in for all of them that there is a future which they need to plan for.

She wants to accept, she realizes. If she gets recruited into the program, she will accept. It’s a chance for a new adventure. A new life. Growing up in that shabby council flat, she’d never even dared to dream that one day she’d be able to go anywhere outside of London. She’d have to be as mad as Luke Skywalker to not take this opportunity if it is offered to her.

But to think about New York is to think about Ben. Common sense comes filtering back to her; of course he hadn’t been shocked when Obi-Wan made that announcement, he’d had to have already known. She’s got a hunch that what he and Hux had been working on—the thing that had made Hux walk in on them—is related to whatever performance from the seventh years will be observed by the MACUSA Aurors tomorrow.

But why had he looked at her? What is the reason? Why had something about him seemed so resigned in that moment?

And, on a completely unrelated note, why had he and Tahiri found so much to talk about earlier? Had they known each other before?

Rey sighs, steeling herself for another sleepless night that will be spent tossing and turning, with so many unanswered questions running through her mind in an endless loop.