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Chapter Text

It’s been nailed into her head since she was a child, long before her Hogwarts letter came. In fact, it’s a lesson she’s been learning since Lex went away for his first year.

All Luthors are Slytherins, her mother said. Every Luthor has been a Slytherin, every Luthor will be a Slytherin.

Even as young as she was, Lena understood. Her mother, normally the master of thinly-veiled threats and sneaky words, was never subtle about what house was expected of her, and the implications had always be clear.

Be a Slytherin, or you aren’t a Luthor.

(When Lena gets older, she wonders if her mother had wished her to be in another house, after all. A way to dismiss her, something else to pin against her beside her bloodline.

She wonders if Lillian would have thought the shame it would bring the family name would be worth it.)

Her first trip to Hogwarts, and Lex isn’t there. It’s the first time she’s ever stood on the platform without her brother, her first time on the train and she’ll be honest, she’s scared. Her mother’s hand rests of her shoulder, as if it were some sort of affectionate gesture, but her fingers dig into Lena’s skin even through her robes, and she winces, gripping her luggage until her knuckles turn white.

Getting to board the train frees her from her mother, but it also makes her feel incredibly lonely. Lena has nobody to sit with, no brother to assure her that she’ll be fine, no friends. And while plenty of first years are in the same boat, they don’t have their last name to weigh them down. People don’t look in on them sitting alone in their compartment with a grimace or a sneer, turning away to find anywhere else to sit.

The first person to ever sit with Lena on the Hogwarts Express is Cat Grant, but at the time, she doesn’t know that. All she knows of her is the blonde girl with a green tie slung around her neck who sits down across from her without even sparing Lena a glance until she notices the other girl staring.

“Can I help you?” she asks, a perfected arch of the eyebrow and just enough bite lacing her words that Lena drops her head to look at the book in her hands, muttering a small ‘no’ under her breath.

Nobody else comes to sit with them, but Lena notices the glare Cat gives everyone who passes by with a look of distaste in their eyes, and something about it makes her feel a little better.

She buries her nose in her textbook, and neither of them say anything until the trolley comes around. In fact, she barely notices that the cart’s even outside the door until she hears the blonde saying her name.

“You want anything, Luthor?” She asks, and considering her tone, Lena almost expects to have fingers snapped in her face. She shakes her head, watches as the other girl gives her a quick look before handing the woman a couple of coins and being handed two bags of candy.

Once the trolley’s gone, Lena speaks up. “You know who I am?” she asks, as if everyone who’s walked past them doesn’t know who she is, as if her family hasn’t been plastered across the Daily Prophet and every other magazine.

“Of course I do; I make it my business to know things,” Cat replies, her tone even. “Lena Luthor, youngest in the line a Luthors, one of the longest standing pureblood families there is.”

Lena blinks, not quite taken aback, but a little thrown off. The blonde just stares at her for a moment, crossing her legs and pulling open one of the bags she’d bought from the trolley. “I’m Cat Grant,” she adds, picking a chocolate covered.... something out of the bag and rolling it back and forth between her fingers. “Third-year Slytherin.”

Lena isn’t quite sure how to reply; there’s no point in introducing herself with Cat obviously already knows who she is, but the other girl only sighs, leaning forward and holding out the bag she’s still holding.

“Take one,” she says, less of a suggestion and more of a demand. “You look like you’re about to start shaking in your seat, have some chocolate.”

She considers denying, but from the way Cat is looking at her, it feels a little pointless, so she sits up in her seat and dips her hand into the bag. She hasn’t had much candy as a kid besides whatever Lex would bring home for her on the holidays or during the summer, so she’s a little wary of the fact that it’s shaped like a fly. Still, with Cat watching her expectantly, she pops it into her mouth, chewing it over and nodding.

“It’s good,” she hums, and Cat seems to accept it, sitting back against her seat, and the curl of her lips seems almost pleased.

And, even if it’s a while after the train ride. Cat Grant becomes the first person at Hogwarts that Lena could call a friend.

-

Any sort of nerves she burned through on the ride to Hogwarts comes rushing back the second she steps into the great hall and sees, through the throng of other first-years around her, the Sorting Hat sitting at the ready. She feels shaky when they start calling names, feels her anxiety spike every time they get one letter closer to L.

She’s not sure what she wants. The idea of being yet another Luthor, another Slytherin in the family line, another dot on a history of bad decisions and bigotry… it makes her want to throw up.

But she doesn’t want to think of what her mother would say, would do, if she were to break tradition. She thinks of locked doors and missed meals and punishments.

When they call her name, she forces herself to be steady, squares her shoulders and makes her way to the front. From the moment they put the hat on her head, she feels unsettled, as if she can almost feel how it picks through her brain, how it reads her before it makes it's decision, announces it to the entire Great Hall.

Over the cheering that echoes in the room, she can practically hear it in her head, what the students from the other houses must be whispering to themselves.

Just another Luthor, they say. A Slytherin like the rest of them. And this one isn’t even a pure-blood.

Still, she holds on to the words the hat spoke into her ear, repeats them over and over in her head until the voice starts to sound like her own, until she thinks she might actually believe it.

Smart, cunning. You may be a Luthor, but your intentions are good-hearted, and you’ve the potential to be the best Luthor in years.

-

(A part of her says it’s for the best, that the other houses wouldn’t have accepted a Luthor anyway.)

-

Lena will admit that, while she may not have any real sort of friends, she feels more at ease at Hogwarts by the end of the first week than she ever did at home, even when Lex was there

The routine of it all is easy for her to fall into, when after all, she’s been trained into routine since she was young. The Luthor household ran on routine, to the point where she often felt like she was living inside of a machine rather than a home. For her, schedules are easy for her to learn and even easier to follow, and she takes quicker to it than several others.

The difference, however, is Hogwarts doesn’t make Lena feel as if she’s walking on her tiptoes everywhere, trying to avoid stepping on eggshells. Back at home, she was constantly checking and rechecking herself, doing her best to avoid upsetting the always unstable peace within her family. There’s a certain freedom that comes from being away from her mother. There’s rules, sure, but for the first time, Lena feels in control of her life. She can stay up late reading and knowing that all she has to worry about is being tired the next morning; she can hear whatever she wants at meals without having to worry about being forced to skip the next one. And sure, she may not want to sneak out at night, but there’s liberation in knowing that if she wanted to, she could, because there weren’t locks on her bedroom door here.

Lena revels in castle, glows. She eats meals her meals in the Great Hall sitting across from Cat, often in silence. She does her homework in the warmth of the library, checks out books and curls up in her covers to read them. She does her homework on time, excels in her classes.

Even if the walls of the Slytherin common room feel cold, even if the other students in and out of her house turn up their nose at her, and even if the closest thing she has to any sort of friend is Cat, she feels infinitely less lonely at Hogwarts than she ever did in the Luthor Mansion.

-

Every since she was kid, Lex has been telling her about flying.

It was freeing, he said, to be up in the air on a broomstick, the whole sky at your fingertips. She loved to listen to the way he talked about clouds and birds and the wind rushing through his hair as he sped around.

He played Quidditch, and she never saw it, because he was on the team at school, but according to what her mother would say, he had to have been good.  He played as seeker, and her mother had always insisted that the seeker was the most important player on the team, the most skilled. Her mother always bragged about Lex like that, but when Lena was a child, she was used to taking everything her mother said as the truth. (Even if it stung.)

He couldn’t play Quidditch at home without a team, but he brought his broomstick home during the summer, and her mother bought him a full Quidditch set. He used to let the snitch out and let it zoom around for a minute or two before flying after it. He could spend hours out in the sunshine chasing that golden ball around the manor, and Lena loved to watch him. As she got older, she would bring a book outside and prop herself against a tree to read, but when she was younger, just following her with his eyes was fascinating.

When Lena has her first flying lesson at Hogwarts, it’s a mix of thrill and apprehension that thrashes in her stomach. The broomstick in her hand is the school’s, beaten down and overused, and she’s practically jittering to get started. Once, just once, when he was sure their parents weren’t watching, Lex had pulled her onto his broomstick and levitated up a good two feet in the air, lazily hovering between the trees with her in front of him, both of them grinning like idiots, but beyond that, Lena had never been in the air, and she’d never been in control.

When the instructor lets them try to fly, Lena’s the third off her feet, but unlike the first kids, her broom is much steadier, while they float from side to side and grip their broomsticks with white knuckles. She doesn’t get as high, either, floating a nice half-meter from the ground. It feels like adrenaline straight to her heart, a smile pulling up the corners of her lips.

Even when she touches back down, she still feels the buzzing in her bones until she goes to sleep that night.

And when she goes to her first Quidditch game, she pictures brown curls on the Slytherin seeker and it’s the closest to homesick she ever gets.

-

Somehow, not only are both her Herbology and Potions classes a shared block between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw first-years, but when the teachers split them into partners for the first half of the year, Lena ends up paired with the same kid in each class.

His name’s Winn Schott, and the first time she meets him, he stumbles over a greeting before shoving his hand out to shake, his arm stiff. Something about how awkward he comes off puts her at ease, and it’s easy to work with him when he’s practically a genius. Easy in Potions, at least, because he’s not quite as talented when it comes to Herbology, if the day they studied Mandrakes is anything to go by.

As the year goes on, she’s surprised to find herself liking him, but even more so that he seems to actually enjoy her presence. He isn’t repulsed by her house or her last name, and for the first time in a long time, she feels like just… Lena.

She doesn’t expect them to get close, to be anything more than partners in class, but soon they’re studying together in the library on breaks. At first, it’s to do a group assignment, which turns into doing homework they both have, but before long, they’re each working on their own individual assignments, content to work mostly in silence, with the occasional interjection or short conversation.

Still, she’s a bit taken aback when he invites her to sit with him and his friends. She can’t help the way her eye go a little wide, the way she stops dead in her tracks, or the way her mouth starts moving before she can catch up or stop it.

“Are you sure your friends would be okay with that?”

His brow furrows as he looks at her. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because I’m a Slytherin,” she replies. “And a Luthor. I’m not exactly the most… well liked here.”

Or anywhere, she thinks, but she stuffs that thought down before it can surface.

Winn tilts his head, giving her a confused smile. “They won’t care about that,” he tells her. “They might have to warm up to you, but they’re good people.”

She nods, and finds herself agreeing.

“Great,” he says, lips curling and white teeth shining through. “See you tonight at dinner!”

-

“Lena!”

She looks up to the sound of her name to see Winn standing and waving his arm in the air, grinning. His tie is loose and his hair is messy but he’s laughing and calling to her. She can’t help but return the smile as she makes her way over to him, even as she feels nerves start to well up.

“I saved you a seat,” he says, dropping back onto the bench and motioning for her to sit beside him. She slips into the spot beside him, ignoring how the butterflies inside her stomach churn. Before she can feel herself begin to get jittery, Winn starts to introduce her to his friends, who she notes wear a variety of house colors, a mix of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff.

“Lena, this is James and Lucy,” he starts, gesturing to the taller guy and the girl with darker hair sitting across from him, both of them draped in Gryfindor robes. “James is in his third year, Lucy’s in her second.

“And these two dorks here,” he continues, gesturing over to the two kids in Hufflepuff robes (who, she notes, look like they could pass for siblings if they wanted). “Are Kara and Barry. They’re both first-years, like us.”

He nods, satisfied, before James throws a pointed look his way, and Winn blinks before the realization hits him. “Oh, yeah, right,” he adds. “Guys, this is my friend Lena.”

Something warm hits her in the chest at the word ‘friend’ , lips turning up at the corners.

Lucy snorts. “My condolences, Lena,” she says, a laugh in her voice. “Having to be friends with this kid over here.”

“Hey!” Winn protests, mouth dropping open in offense. “Aren’t you my friend?”

“Eh,” Lucy shrugs, feigning nonchalance despite the grin that’s starting to grow on her face. “Last time, I checked, you were just the little Ravenclaw boy Kara and Barry picked up on the train.”

Winn gives a small, playful scowl, and Barry throws an arm around the other boy’s shoulder. “You know she’s just messing with you, Winnie,” he soothes, but he’s still snickering. “We love you and your genius brain.”

Winn rolls his eyes, shrugging off the arm draped over him, but from the look on his face, he’s clearly not upset. James chuckles, and Kara, who’s been giggling the whole time, turns to Lena across the table.

“Sorry about,” she starts, pausing before vaguely waving at the rest of her friends around the table. “All of them. But yeah, I’m Kara. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” Lena says, and something about the way they all look at each other, the way Kara is looking at her right now, makes her feel something that tastes like belonging.

Lena’s life, after that, starts to feel a little less lonely, if only for the fact that she now has a place to sit in the Great Hall that isn’t across from Cat Grant, though she still sits with the older girl sometimes.

She doesn’t necassarily see much of any of Winn’s friends (they’re not really close enough to call them friends, persay), but she still spends time with the Ravenclaw, in and out of the library. She also meets Alex, another one of his friends and Kara’s older sister. The girl insists on studying with her one time, despite being a year above Lena, and when she quizzes her, it feels more like a grilling. Still, Alex gives her a smile by the time she leaves, and the almost crytic way she talks feels like she’s just gotten… approval from the older girl.

As the year goes on, she starts to feel content in her day to day life. However, when Winn gets sick for almost two weeks, it feels like an illusion is shattered. Meals aren’t much quieter, no, but she feels a little out of place. They still talk to her, sure, but she feels like an outsider again. Halfway through his illness, Lena finds herself alone in the library, alternating between studying and copying down a second set of her notes from Potions and Herbology to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. She didn’t realize how much she’d come to appreciate his presence until he was gone. She’s so used to Winn being the only real friend she has at Hogwarts that she startles, nearly falling out of her chair, she hears a voice calling her name.

“Lena? Hey!”

Her head snaps up from the papers in front of her to see Kara standing there, a small stack of books tucked under her arms and a bag slung over her shoulder. Her robes look ruffled and her glasses are a little askew but she’s giving Lena a broad grin.

“Do you mind if I sit?” She asks, gesturing to one of the chairs around the table. Lena blinks for a minute before nodding, something spilling from her lips and later, she won’t even be able to remember whatever it was she said to Kara. The blonde smiles as she plops herself into the seat, dropping her bag on the ground and spreading out her things.

Lena turns back to her copying, but she’s drawn right back out of it when Kara starts to chatter. Quietly, of course, because they’re in the library.

“Are you copying an extra set of notes for Winn?” She asks.

Lena nods. “It’d be unfortunate if my Potions partner fell behind and accidentally blew us up the next time we mixed something in class,” she replies, but there’s a clear sort of affection behind her words. Kara laughs, dropping her gaze and adjusting her glasses.

“That’s sounds like a Winn thing to do,” she says, before her eyes go wide and her head pops back up. “Not that I think Winn is going to blow you up or anything, he’s very smart and-”

“Don’t worry, I’d never let him blow up our lab,” Lena puts in, interrupting Kara before she falls into one of the rambling rants that’ve become oh so common at the meals Lena shares with her. “I mean, how our poor grades would suffer, I could never!”

That gets Kara to crack up before she remembers they’re in a library and she calms herself back down to avoid drawing too much attention from the other students, or worse, the librarian. Lena glances down at all of the books by the blonde, notices how they’re all shut and instead of reading them, Kara’s got a quill out and her hand is hovering over parchment. At the very top of the sheet, she can just make out the word ‘dear’ from across the table, before the rest of the letters turn into words either too far away or too sloppy to read.

“Are you writing a letter?” She asks, curious despite the fact she’s pretty sure she already knows the answer. Kara nods, confirming what she thought.

“To my mom,” she adds. “Well, um, my adoptive mother, Eliza.”

“You’re adopted?”

It slips out of her lips before she can stop it, but Kara doesn’t seem bothered.

“I lost my parents when I was six,” she explains. “In a fire.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lena says, reaching a hand across the table to cover the one Kara has resting on the table, earning herself a grateful smile. Only about a second and a half passes before she finds herself speaking again.

“I’m adopted, too,” she adds, as Kara’s fingers wrap around her own and squeeze. “My mother died of an illness and I never really knew my father, so the Luthors took me in.”

“Do you remember her?” Kara asks, and her voice is soft, gentle. Something about it makes Lena actually want to open up. She’s never talked about her mother, her birth mother, to anyone beside Lex, and even then, she hadn’t spoken much on the subject.

“Not very much,” she admits. “I remember that she would read to me at night. And she used to sing, too.”

Kara’s grip on her hand tightens again, and she gives a quiet hum. It takes Lena a moment to realize that her eyes are warm, as if she might cry, something she’s only allowed herself to do once since she’s been at school. She pushes it away and instead gives Kara her best attempt at a grin, which likely comes off as watery or weak. Still, Kara smiles at her, and it makes her feel...

Okay.

-

By the time Winn comes back from the hospital wing, something’s already changed between Lena and the rest of the group, as if becoming friends with Kara was the real key to getting to know everyone else. She’s glad to have him back at the table of course, but she doesn’t really feel like an outside without him anymore. She thinks Winn picks up on the shift, too, because he smiles at her when he catches her teasing Kara across the table.

Lena sees a lot more of Kara after that, even outside of meals. Instead of the library, however, Kara convinces her that any studying they do together should be done outside, under the sunlight of the clock tower courtyard. Lena is sure what compels her to agree, but soon she’s spending time among the green trees and the sound of water bubbling in the fountain. Sometimes, Alex comes to study with them, her consistent prodding keeping them on track with their books. Other times, Barry joins them, and they turn out to be a lot less productive on those days, as Lena finds herself swept up in just how easy it is for the two of them to make each other, and her, to laugh. Often, though, it's just them, their backs against a stone wall and the grass under their legs as they sit shoulder to shoulder, jumping between studying and talking at a moment’s notice.

She still spends time with Winn at the library and, as the weather gets better, when he joins her and Kara in the courtyard. It scares her a little, how she finds herself spending so much time with them so quickly, but not enough to make her stop. Suddenly, her days are so full of laughter that she often forgets about her last name, how being a Luthor has almost always gotten her nothing but judgement, or how her mother had assured her that her house would be a family, but they all seem to resent her, too.

It’s all very easy to forget when she’s sitting between Winn and Kara in a crowded compartment on the Hogwarts Express, laughing when Lucy tries to throw chocolate into James’ mouth and hitting him in the eye instead, or when Barry (who’s ended up having to sit on the floor) eats a less than pleasant flavor of Bernie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and spends the next five minutes pretending to die in the most dramatic fashion he could, flopping over Alex’s feet and lying there until she leans over to swat him on the head.

And it’s all too easy to forget until the train pulls into Platform Nine and Three Quarters and she catches a glimpse of her mother standing on the platform, hands grasped to purse straps and her face already twisted into a cold mask of disappointment.

She remembers, then, that she’s a Luthor.

Chapter Text

Lena spends her time away from Hogwarts in the silence that fills the hall of Luthor Manor. Without Lex’s laughter or his smile to feel the empty space, the house feels so incredibly lonely. The three months she’s home from school, she lives under her mother’s critical and overbearing presence, waiting until she can finally leave for classes again. The best moment of her summer is the end of it, when she runs through the wall with her luggage cart and finds herself standing on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, other students and their parents running about. Lena’s goodbye to her mother is curt and quick, punctuated with an uncomfortable hug, and she wastes no time in getting on to the train immediately after.

The second she starts walking down the long corridor of compartments, she has a sudden thought that she doesn’t know where she’s going to sit. She has no idea where Winn or anyone else is, and they haven’t spoken all summer anyway; anything could have changed, they might not want to sit with her-

“Lena!”

She’s so lost in thought she hasn’t even been looking at the windows she’s passing, and she glances behind her to see Barry, hanging out of a compartment and beaming. Her own lips turn up to match as she turns on her heel to make her way over. He slings an arm around her shoulder to pull her into a side-hug, before practically hip-checking her inside the carriage to find Kara and Winn already stretched out on one seat, the latter of which is sat back by the window with the blonde’s legs stretched over his lap. They both brighten up at the sight of Barry dragging her into the seat across from them, and she gives a breathless chuckle.

“Nice hair.”

It slips from her lips before she can stop it, causing both Winn and Kara to burst into laughter. Barry pouts, one hand coming up to mess with his long, shaggy locks, but he’s still smiling despite himself.

“Cold-blooded- ah!” Winn cheers, cutting off when Kara shoves him, causing her and Lena to laugh even harder. They’re still in fits when the train takes off, and Lena doesn’t even think to look out the window to see if her mom was still there, watching.

(She wasn’t, of course, but Lena didn’t care to know anyway.)

-

The Great Hall is different this time around, as she’s not a first year. Instead, she sits with the rest of her house, in a sea of green ties at the table. The sorting seems to go a lot slower this year than the last, when she doesn't have her own anxiety to focus on. She sits with Cat Grant and some other Slytherin she doesn’t know, and the three of them trade small comments to make the time go faster, trying to guess what house each kid will be in. Cat is, rather unsurprisingly, the best at it.

When all the kids have been sorted and sat, she’s hungry and ready to eat. She’s missed the food here, too, and the hall itself: the warm atmosphere, the laughter.

Lena glances over her shoulder to scan the tables around her, to see if she can spot any of her friends. Her gaze focuses in on the Ravenclaw table, where she can see Alex and Winn, the latter with a mouth full of food. His head pops and he catches her eye, grinning ear to ear with his cheeks puffed out. She snorts before turning back to her own table to find Cat looking at with an eyebrow raised. Lena only shakes her head and focuses her attention back on her plate, lips still pulling up at the corners.

When dinner is over and everyone is heading back to their dorms, another student falls into step beside her, dressed in Slytherin robes with her tie hanging loose around her neck.

“Hey Luthor,” she says, and despite the fact that she doesn’t wield the last name like a weapon, something about the way it falls from her lips make Lena feel almost uncomfortable.

“Willis,” she replies, fighting to cross her arms over her chest. She doesn’t know the girl terribly well, but they stayed in the same room last year and she knows that if Leslie Willis is talking to her, she probably wants something.

“Looks like we’re in the same room again this year,” the blonde starts, but she’s cut off.

“What do you want, Leslie?” Lena huffs.

“Listen, Luthor, I’m just trying to be friendly. Neither of us have very many friends-”

“I have friends.”

“-Within our house,” Leslie amends. “All your friends are in… other houses. Would it really be so bad to try and make some friends in Slytherin?”

“Friends, no,” Lena says. “But you don’t tend to try and make friends. You prefer connections.”

Instead of being offended, Leslie laughs. “I know you’ve got that whole ‘chip on your shoulder’ thing going on, but I’ve seen the company you keep,” she barks, still wearing a snarky sort of grin on her face. “You’re not made of ice, Luthor, and believe it or not, I’m not as impossible to get along with as you think I am.”

Lena rolls her eyes, but finds herself smiling. “Ha ha,” she replies, sarcastic.

And she doesn’t see it, of course, because they’re walking in different directions, but behind her, Kara stops, watching them over her shoulder with her eyes narrowed.

-

By the third day of classes, Lena’s already been dragged into the courtyard by Kara and Barry, under the pretense of studying for Charms. Their charms class is shared between Hufflepuff and Slytherin this year, and even if they aren’t in partners, it’s still nice to look over to the Hufflepuff side of the room and see the two of them making silly faces at her. They can be distracting even from across a classroom.

When Kara grabs her by the hand after class and pulls her outside, Barry catching up to them just as they step out into the sunlight, she isn't really surprised. Despite the way she pretends to be exasperated with the both of them, she feels a sense of peace the moment they’re out in the air. The trees are summertime green and the water in the fountain bubbles and she’d forgotten how simply being in the courtyard made her feel like she belonged.

She drops her bag into the grass and sits back against the wall, Barry and Kara on either side of her, the latter tossing her book off to the side and sliding down until she’s laying flat on her back, face turned up to the sky.

“I’ve missed this,” she breathes, eyes fluttering shut as she grins.

Lena expects some sort of smart comment from Barry, but he only smiles. “Me too,” he admits, tucking his arms behind his head and shimmying until he’s decided he’s comfortable enough. Lena laughs, soft, but it’s cut off when she yawns instead. She hasn’t slept well since the second night of being back at Hogwarts, and normally she’s good at functioning on little to no sleep, but school’s just started again after summer and she’s not quite back in the hang of it yet.

“You should sleep,” Kara suggests, her eyes still closed.

“I thought we came here to study,” Lena retorts, but it’s somewhat of a moot point when all three of them knew fully well that, if the three of them were together, they wouldn’t be getting any work done.

“You knew what this was,” the blonde accuses. Lena shakes her head but shrugs, pushing back from the wall and leaning back onto the ground.

“I’m not one for napping,” she protests, despite the fact that she’s now staring up at the clouds, using her bag as a pillow.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Kara replies. “Naps are for everyone. Exhibit A.”

She gestures to Barry, and Lena turns onto her side to see Barry still propped against the wall. His arms have fallen to his side, head slumped on his shoulders and he’s already fading out, if he isn’t already asleep.

“Your point?” Lena asks, rolling onto her back again, and although she can’t see her, she hears Kara give a soft chuckle.

“Go to sleep, Lena,” she says instead, and when the conversation fizzles out and leaves them both in relative silence, Lena feels black seeping into the edge of her vision, and she lets it take over and drag her into sleep.

She wakes up a good while later, when the sky is just starting to change, to the sounds of a pop and a quick hiss, and when she sits up, she sees Kara and Barry both hunched over cards splayed out in front of them, wands in hand.

“You didn’t wake me up to play Exploding Snap?” She accuses, and the almost guilty look Kara gives her is comical. Barry snickers, especially when a card explodes and Kara jumps, her grip on her wand tightening.

“Don’t worry, Lena, this will be over soon,” he tells her, and she can tell by the tone of his voice he’s about to make one of his teasing comments. “We can play a round once I finish using Kara to mop the floor.”

Kara yelps, indignant, and it makes Lena crack up when another card bursts and the blonde almost falls over.

(And true to his word, Barry does beat Kara by almost twice her score.)

-

She studies with Winn, too, back in the library. When she’s with Winn, the two of them actually get studying done, and without him balancing out the time she spends with Kara and Barry, she isn’t sure she’d actually manage to get all of her work done.

They always end up there in weird hours, too, and whenever she leaves to head back to the Slytherin common room, the halls are usually empty, or mostly quiet. Usually, but not always.

She’s on her way back to her room when she hears the soft thump of other footsteps in the hall. It doesn’t phase her, and she’s planning on ignoring it and just keep walking until she hears her name being called.

When she turns around, there’s two other girls standing there, one in Slytherin green and the other in Ravenclaw blue. The Ravenclaw she doesn’t know, but the other girl she does: Siobhan Smythe, a third-year and, as most people have come to call her, a total bitch. While a lot of Slytherins tend to leave Lena mostly alone, due to sharing the same house, Smythe has no such reservations. In fact, she seems to favor messing with Lena over anyone else, although both Kara and Winn have mentioned her picking at them before.

“Where are your little friends, Lena?” Siobhan taunts, taking a couple strides forward and stopping, folding her arms over her chest. The girl with her falls only a half-step behind, silent but wearing a smirk of her own.

She doesn’t give Lena a chance to respond before she speaks again. “Have they finally ditched you? Not surprising. With your last name, it’s a wonder they talked to you in the first place. Nobody in our own house even likes you.”

“What do you want, Siobhan?”

“Oh, I was just wondering,” she says, and although she acts innocent, the chesire way her lips curl tells a different story. “When are you going to pledge your loyalty to the death eaters, Luthor? I’m sure they’re all just waiting to put a dark mark on your pretty little arm, aren’t they?”

“You wouldn’t want to keep them waiting,” adds the Ravenclaw. “Would you?”

There’s another set of footsteps, and a girl in black and red comes around the corner, arms crossed. “Why don’t you ask your mom, Smythe?” She spits. “I’ve heard she was at the last meeting this summer. Then again, any sort of social function is an excuse to leave the house and escape you, isn’t it?”

Siobhan sneers, nostrils flaring, but it’s clear that whoever this Gryffindor is, she just struck a nerve. Lena can see the way Siobhan’s fists clench and unclench before she turns on her heels and stalks away, shoving against Lena with her shoulder as she passes, the Ravenclaw following after her.

The other girl comes up to her, arms unfolded and her hands shoved in the pockets of her robes. “Are you okay?”

“Um, yeah,” Lena says, still a little caught off-guard. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the Gryffindor assures her. “Siobhan’s a bitch. I’m Maggie Sawyer.”

“Lena,” the taller of the two responds. “Luthor, that is.”

“So I’ve heard,” Maggie says. “Why are you heading back to your dorm alone when there’s still over an hour left before curfew?”

She considers something snarky, like ‘why are you?” , but instead Lena just tells the truth. “I was studying at the library with a friend, we decided to end early,” she answers.

“Fair enough.”

There’s a beat of silence, before Maggie shrugs. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” she starts. “But I’m going to head back to my room now. See you later.”

“Yeah, see you later,” Lena echoes, watching Maggie turn around and head back the way she came. She stares at the empty corridor for a moment before shaking her head and walking away.

Of course, it is not the last she sees of Maggie Sawyer.

-

Lena would be lying if she said she didn’t think Leslie Willis had a point, so the two of them start to hang out more often. She may not care too much for the Slytherin dungeon and it’s eerie green glow, but it’s nice to be able to hang out with someone while sitting back in her own bed. It’s also nice to know her when their History of Magic teacher has the class partner up to work on a paper. They work on it in the common room, but they also sit together at a meal or two to finish it up and turn it in. She doesn’t find Leslie too awful, but she also doesn’t trust her, so she holds the girl at an arm’s length.

The next time she sits at her regular table for breakfast, James is already there but the seats around him are empty. Many of their friends tend to run late, but Lena’s been hardwired into being punctual, so it’s not surprising she gets there before most of them.

James looks up when she sits down, gives her a grin. “Lena,” he greets. The way he says her name is familiar, and it makes her chest warm. “Glad to see you’re back.”

“Back?” she echoes, as she starts to put food onto her plate. “Where did I go?”

“You missed the last two meals,” he replies, pausing to take a drink of the pumpkin juice in his goblet. “If you heard Kara talk about it, it would sound like you disappeared for three weeks.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really,” he repeats. “Plus, it doesn’t help that you were sitting with Leslie Willis. Kara’s got some weird issue with her or something, she spent the entirety of dinner last night pretending she wasn’t pouting.”

Lena laughs, taking a bite of eggs and swallowing before speaking. “Sounds like Kara,” she agrees. “But what’s problem with Leslie? I mean, she’s not the most sunshiney of people, but she isn’t too horrid.”

“I have no idea,” he replies, and he opens his mouth to say something else before he cuts himself off with a grin, looking off somewhere behind her. She glances over her shoulder to see Lucy and Alex coming up behind her.

“Hey Jimmy,” Lucy says, a teasing lilt in her voice as she slips into the seat beside him. Alex drops herself on the bench across from them, leaving a seat between her and Lena for Kara, otherwise she would still try and squeeze herself between them. Sure enough, only a minute or two after Alex sits down, Kara comes rushing in and falls into the spot beside her, immediately starting to pile food onto her plate. She doesn’t speak until she’s swallowed at least one whole sausage.

“Morning guys,” she mumbles through a mouthful of toast, earning herself laughs from everyone around the table, which seems a little empty when it’s still missing Barry and Winn. However, the table seems a little fuller when Lena looks up to see Clark Kent, of all people, taking a seat next to James. Logically, of course, she has no real reason to be afraid of Clark, but she feels herself go stiff nonetheless.

“Hey Jimmy,” he says, throwing his arm around the other boy’s shoulder, beforing turning his grin across the table. “Hey Kara.”

“Hi Clark,” she practically chirps. “It’s been a while.”

“That it has,” he replies. “Too long, kiddo.”

Lena’s body is stiff, but she can feel nervous energy humming under her skin. She thinks of Lex, the pictures in the paper of his maniacal laughter, the crazed look in his eyes. She can practically see what the battle may have looked like, Lex with his wand out and sparks flying, Clark’s glasses knocked off his face and lying discarded on the ground. She looks down at the food still on her plate and she feels nasuecous, but then there’s fingers wrapping around her own, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“Are you alright?” Kara asks, her brow furrowed in concern. Lena glances around to see everyone else talking among themselves, distracted, and she nearly sighs in relief.

“I’m fine,” Lena assures her, but from the way Kara bites her lip, she isn’t sure the other girl believes her. “I just zoned out, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Kara murmurs, squeezing her hand once before dropping it. Lena shakes her head, shoves a spoonful of porridge in her mouth and pretends like it doesn’t make her stomach churn when Clark glances across the table and they make eye contact.

When Barry comes running up to tell her and Kara that if they don’t book it, they’ll be late to class, she’s never been more grateful to see him.

-

(She isn’t quite sure what to think when Kara tells her that Clark Kent is her cousin. Lena wonders if she thinks of Lex when she tells her, if she thinks about what he’s done.)

-

Ever since Lena met Maggie, she seems to be running into her all the time. Maggie’s a year above her, so they don’t share any classes, but they always end up passing each other in the halls, and since they’re in different houses, it’s not like they run into each other in the common room.

However, they do see each other often in the library. To Lena, it feels like whenever she walks into the library to study without Winn by her side, she ends up sat at a table with Maggie. Soon, despite the fact that they don’t actually share any curriculum, they spread their homework out between them and work shoulder to shoulder until it’s all done. It’s especially nice because Maggie’s already completed and passed all of Lena’s subjects, so she’s able to help her with almost anything she gets stuck on.

She’s never invited Maggie to sit with her at lunch, but the thought that she could have done so doesn’t even occur to her until Maggie shows up at the table one day without her, trailing behind Alex and Lucy.

“Guys, this is Maggie,” the Ravenclaw says. “She’s my partner in Herbology.”

“I think you mean the only reason you’re passing Herbology,” Maggie corrects as she sits down beside Lucy. She glances around the table, grinning when she catches Lena’s eye. “Hey Luthor.”

Lena laughs. “Hey Maggie,” she replies, taking a bite of the steak on her plate. Beside her, Kara seems to stiffen, fingers tightening around her silverware for a moment before she goes back to eating, oddly silent. Lena rests a hand on the girl’s knee under the table, watching as some of tension releases from Kara’s shoulders, but she doesn’t seem to really relax the entire meal.

Watching Maggie interact with everyone at their lunch table makes her regret not inviting the Gryffindor to sit with them sooner. She fits in well, especially with Lucy, able to take the other girl’s barbs and throw them back with ease. In fact, she seems to get along well with everyone except Kara, who seems to force her smiles the entire meal. Maggie may not be able to notice, but Lena can tell, and from the looks she’s getting from Alex, so can her sister. Still, when she leans in to quietly ask Kara if she’s okay, the blonde gives her nod and says, “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

She wants to follow up with her after lunch, but she has her Defense Against the Dark Arts class next, and she barely has time to catch Kara’s arm and tell her to meet afterwards in the courtyard before she has to book it to make it to class.

It might be the longest Defense Against the Dark Arts class she’s ever had to sit through, so when the teacher dismisses them, she’s more than ready to leave, gathering her books and dropping them off back in her room before heading outside. Kara’s already there, not surprisingly, with sitting up against the wall with a book in her lap, which she actually appears to be reading.

“You’re actually studying?” Lena asks, settling down on the ground across from her and crossing her legs. “On the day I don’t bring my books?”

“You didn’t bring your books?”

“We almost never get any real studying done,” she points out. “I figured I would just put them in my room on the way out here.”

“Well then, studying is cancelled,” Kara declares, tossing her book aside. “History of Magic is boring, anyway.”

“Hey, History of Magic is actually pretty interesting,” Lena protests. “You just actually have to, you know, pay attention in class to know what’s going on and enjoy it.”

Kara folds her arms over her chest and pouts, earning herself a laugh. When they fade into silence, Lena glances over to see the blonde staring at the clouds passing overhead.

“Kara,” she starts gently. “What was wrong this morning? You seemed off.”

“I’m fine,” Kara replies, but the way her face shifts says no, she most definitely is not fine.

“Kara,” Lena repeats.

“Fine, fine. I… I didn’t like it when Maggie called you Luthor this morning."

Her response is met with stunned silence, and when she looks over, Lena’s eyes are soft and unreadable. After a pause, she reaches over to wrap her hand around Kara’s. She still doesn’t speak, but when the blonde looks up at her, she nods, as if to say ‘go on’.

“It’s just that- so many people use your last name as an insult,” she explains. “So many people treat like you’re different or you’re evil because you’re a Luthor, but you’re so much more than that. It makes me upset that people always use your last name to define you, so when she called you Luthor, I guess it just… made me upset.”

Lena sighs, a sad smile pulling at her lips. “Kara,” she murmurs, scooting across the grass until her back is against the wall and they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. “It’s- When Maggie calls me by my last name, I don’t mind it. In fact, I like it when Maggie calls me Luthor. She calls most people by their last name, if she called me something different because of my last name, that would bother me, but she doesn’t.”

Kara nods, winding her arm around Lena when the other girl leans into her side. They sit side by side in the silence for a good long time, textbook still discarded beside them, and they don’t leave until it’s almost time for dinner, and even then, they show up hand in hand to the Great Hall.

(Kara smiles at Maggie across the table, and it’s genuine this time.)

-

They have to pick their electives for next year when the Spring rolls around, and for the most part, Lena has already picked out her classes. She’s planning on taking Ancient Runes and Magical Theory, maybe picking up Arithmancy as well to round it out. Mostly, of course, she picks out these classes because she knows it’s what her mother would want. Sure, Muggle Studies sounds interesting enough, and she’s sure she’d like it, but it’s easier in the end to pick the classes that won’t upset her mother.

Barry and Winn do not agree, and they tell her as much one day at lunch, when the three of them are sat at the table before anyone else has arrived, something that rarely ever happens.

“So you’re going to base your class choices on what your mother wants?” Winn asks, almost incredulous.

“These are going to be your classes for the next few years,” Barry adds. “Shouldn’t you take what you want to take, or the things you think you should take? It’s not just going to affect a semester or two, it’s going to affect pretty much the rest of your time at Hogwarts unless you drop a class, and I don’t see you doing that.”

“I don’t know,” Lena replies, shaking her head. “Sometimes it’s just… easier to do what she wants me to, it creates less of an issue when I’m back at home with her.”

“But you’ll only be home for three months out of a year,” he points out. “The rest of your time you’ll be here, suffering through these classes that you only took to make the summer more bearable. Plus, you’ll have to take O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s.”

She sighs, nodding. “You’ve got a point,” she admits. “I’m just… used to doing everything the way she wants me to do it… comes with the Luthor name, I guess.”

It’s at that moment Kara walks up, plunking herself down beside Lena and grabbing a roll from the trays in the center of the table. “What are we talking about?” She asks around a mouthful of bread.

“Lena’s taking the classes her mother wants her to take instead of the ones she wants to take,” Winn answers, frowning when Lena shoots him a look. “What? It’s the truth!”

“Lena,” Kara says, her name coming out almost like a whine. “You should be taking what you want, not the boring classes your mother does. Oh! You should take Care of Magical Creatures with me and Barry, it’d be so much fun! We could study together!”

“Us ‘studying’ together means hanging out in the courtyard and not getting any work done,” Lena replies. “We already do that, and we don’t have to be in the same courses to avoid doing anything.”

“But it would still be fun! Plus, we might have the same period!”

“We’ll see,” Lena answers with a laugh, taking another bite of casserole and swallows before speaking again. “Besides, we’ve got another week or two before we have to pick our classes, I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.”

“Take what you want to take,” Barry advises, his eyes gentle. “You owe it to yourself.”

It’s his words that she thinks about several days later, when she’s actually sitting down to pick her classes. She’s got a list of choices ahead of her, and she knows what her mother wants isn’t what she wants.

In the end, she takes Magical Theory and Muggle Studies, a class her mother expects from her alongside the one she wants to take. They give her the option to take extra electives, and she is a Luthor, after all, so she throws in Care of Magical Creatures to finish her curriculum for the next year.

She tells herself she only picked it because she finds the material interesting.

-

On the train ride home for the summer, it’s only Winn, Barry, Kara, and Lena together, much like it had been on the way to school at the beginning of the year. Their carriage had been crowded enough with everyone squished together last year, and now that the group had picked up not only Maggie but also Cat (who had been brought to them by James before Kara took a shine to her), there was definitely no way they were all squeezing into one compartment. Instead, the second years had all claimed their own, allowing the four of them a little more legroom to stretch out.

‘Stretching out’, of course, means Kara takes it as a free pass to take up not only all of her space, but Lena’s as well, throwing her legs across the other girl’s lap and shimmying in the seat until she’s comfortable. She looks almost ready to take a nap, with her head pillowed on her hands and her entire body relaxed.

Winn and Barry have both made themselves comfortable, too, the former sitting cross-legged with his back up against the wall while the latter’s pushed his luggage under his legs, his suitcase holding up his knees while his feet rest on Kara’s calves. Lena’s own feet are kicked up on her trunk, and the book in her hands eventually gets tossed inside when she gives up on reading.

When the trolley comes by, the woman pushing it gives them all a look before offering them candy with a smile. Barry buys, as usual, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, despite the fact that he always complains about the gross ones while eating. Winn, who usually doesn’t get anything, snags a chocolate frog, and Lena grabs herself a pack of Toffees. Kara buys several things, and manages to eat a good third of it before Lena’s finished half of her sweets. She’s intent on eating all of it, and would have, if it weren’t for Lena convincing her to save some of it, lest she throw up on the ride home. She pouts, but puts it away after enough prodding.

Barry, of course, cracks open his jelly beans, and complains for a good minute or two after every bean of a less desirable flavor, until finally Winn takes the bag, declaring they can’t be all that bad, and promptly spits out the first one he puts in his mouth.

“That tasted like a rotten egg,” he moans as he wipes his tongue on his robe, as if it will get the taste out of his mouth.

“Well, that is a flavor,” Barry replies. “So it’s possible.”

“Why do you know what a rotten egg tastes like?” Kara asks, crinkling her nose.

“Well, I’ve smelled one,” Winn answers. “Smell is a big part of taste, you know. That’s why plugging your nose when you’re eating something gross makes it so it doesn’t taste as bad.”

“Good to know,” she hums, before jerking a thumb in Lena’s direction. “I’ll be sure to try that the next time this one makes me eat vegetables at dinner.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for wanting to make sure you have a healthy, balanced diet,” Lena says, holding her hands up in the air. Outside, the trees and sky fade into a tunnel, and she recognizes it as the one that leads into Platform Nine and Three Quarters. It makes her stomach drop, and she misses whatever smart reply Kara gives when she sees the train station come into view, her mother standing front and center, looking as if she has any place to be besides here.

“We’re here,” Winn says, but his voice holds the same amount of excitement Lena feels: approximately none. The laughter, for the most part, has stopped as everyone reaches down to collect their own luggage. Lena’s the first to move to get off the train, but Kara catches her elbow as she’s about to leave.

“I don’t have your address,” she says, and her lips turn up in a grin. “How’m I supposed to write you letters if I don’t know where to send them?”

Lena’s throat dries up as she thinks about letters coming to her house from Kara with her name on them, what the look on her mother’s face would be. Her tongue feels think and she nearly stammers as she responds.

“I- I have to go,” she replies, fully aware of all three sets of eyes watching her as she tugs free of Kara’s grip and disappears up the hallway, her chest clenching and her face warm. She feels almost sick with herself as she steps outside onto the platform and over to where her mother is standing. Lillian grabs her shoulder, fingers tight, her grip doesn’t leave until they’re on the way home.

Lena glances back over her shoulder once, and she catches a glimpse of Kara’s blonde hair and Alex’s brown bob weaving through the crowd before she tears her eyes away.

(She knows she’s in for a lonely summer.)

Chapter Text

When Lena was a kid, Lex took her to the ocean nearby. He wanted to show her that, as much as they both loved magic, as much as their lives revolved around magic, there was more to them than just that.

(He never said it, of course, but when she grew up, she always wondered if it was because he knew her mother was a squib. Maybe he thought that showing her beauty beyond magic would help her, make her feel more connected to her mom in some small way, but he never said anything.)

The summer before his fifth year at Hogwarts, he took her down to the water close to their manor, far away enough that they couldn’t see it looming behind them anymore. The shore was sandy, but it was also littered with rocks, and when Lex pulled her to a stop, it was to bend over and grab a stone between his fingers.

“Watch this,” he said, and he gave her a dimpled grin before he hurled it out over the water. She watched it hit, once, before bouncing off the surface and connecting again: twice, three times before it sunk into the sea.

“Cool, huh?” He said, laughing when Lena grinned, nodding hard enough to make her head spin. “That’s what I thought when Clark showed me, too.”

“Here, you try,” he offered, pressing a flat pebble into her hands. She stared at it for a moment, unsure of what to do exactly, before he laughed, grabbing one of his own to show her.

“So you pull your arm back,” he instructed, moving as he spoke. “And then you bend your wrist in and… flick! If you follow through, then your throw is better and it’ll probably skip farther.”

The second one he throws goes even farther than the first, and Lena does her best to imitate him when tries to skip hers. It hits the surface of the water and falls right in, sinking to the bottom and leaving her disheartened on the shore.

“Cheer up, Lee,” her brother says, reaching over to push at her shoulder with his hand. “It’s just like everything else, you gotta practice until you get it right. Come on, try it again.”

She reaches down and picks up another rock, holding it out for him to examine. “Is this one good?” She asks.

“Perfect,” he decides, pretending to look it over and appraise it before giving it his approval. She looks at him for a moment, waiting until he gives her a nod before trying again. This time, it skips once before falling into the water, but Lex congratulates her and it feels like success.

They spend their whole afternoon down by the sea, and by the time they’re ready to head back to the manor, she’s gotten just as good as Lex.

“Don’t tell mom,” he says on the home, his arm around her shoulder. She looks up at him with confusion painted across her face. “She’d rather us being inside playing Wizard Chess or something.

“Why?” She asks, and he sighs.

“It’s just the way it is,” he answers, and that’s the end of it.

The conversation won’t feel like it means anything until Lex has gone crazy and Lena’s grown up.

-

By the end of the summer, Lena’s so ready to go back to Hogwarts that she doesn’t even realize she’s nervous until she’s at the train station, about to pass through the wall, when she thinks about the awkward way she had parted last year, vanishing without giving her address or an explanation.

She tells herself that it’s only because she didn’t want to keep her mother waiting, but she knows the real reason why, and she knows that she bolted so quickly only becaue she isn’t sure how she was supposed to explain.

She’s almost apprehensive to get on the train this year, but she can’t put it off for more than a couple minutes, and the sooner she escapes her mother, the better. So she bids the woman goodbye, ducking the unwanted hug this time, and boards.

She looks through the carriages as she goes down the hall, and when she finds Kara sitting alone in one, eyes focused on something outside the window, her hand hovers over the sliding door before she steps inside. Kara, mostly out of surprise, jumps to her feet, and after a moment of staring at the small smile Lena’s wearing, almost lunges forward to hug her like they haven’t been apart and out of contact for three months.

The moment Kara wraps her arms around her, she feels any worry she had melting away, reaching up to squeeze the the other girl tight, blonde hair against her face and a smile on her lips.

“Hi,” she says when Kara leans back, which only succeeds in getting herself pulled into another hug. This one isn’t quite as long, however, because it’s cut off by Winn and Barry’s entrance, and Kara releases her to throw herself against them. Once she lets him go, Lena pulls each of them into her own hug, much shorter than the ones Kara gives them.

When Lena and Barry are still holding onto each other, the train lurches a little beneath their feet, and they take that as a sign to sit down and get comfortable. Kara still insists on practically draping herself over Lena and promptly passes out maybe ten minutes into the ride, leaving the other girl with deadweight in her lap. Winn nods off a couple minutes after, head against the wall, leaving Barry and Lena the only two in their compartment awake.

“Why are they so tired?” She asks, and even though it’s mostly rhetorical, he gives her an answer anyway.

“They’ve been doing this muggle thing called ‘skyping’,” he replies. “It’s like… each person has this little screen, and they can connect them over long distance with something called wi-fi? But you can use them to like, see the other person’s face and talk.”

“So it’s like a phone call, but with faces?”

“I don’t know what a phone call is,” Barry admits. Lena shrugs it off, glancing at Kara, who’s starting to drool on herself. He follows her gaze, and upon seeing the blonde, snorts.

“So why does… skyping make them so tired?”

“Winn said they were up late last night talking to each other while packing,” he explains. “Apparently, they both decided to wait to the last minute before finishing to get their luggage ready. Not surprising, of course.”

“Sounds like them,” Lena agrees. “Why aren’t you doing this thing with them?”

“I don’t have any of the screen or the connection thing. Winn does, because his mother’s non-magic, and Kara lives in a muggle town, so they’re hooked up to what this network thing is, and she convinced her mother to buy her a cell phone, is what she said.”

“Huh.”

Barry shrugs. They’re sitting near the back of the train, so they’re one of the first compartments that the trolley stops by. Barry gets his usual bag of Bertie Bott’s, and Lena buys a couple different things, most of which are for Kara, who’ll be upset if she finds out she missed the trolley and didn’t get anything. Barry gives her a knowing smile, and she raises an eyebrow, popping open a bag of something chocolate and offering him a piece.

Of course, when Kara wakes up a little more than an hour later, her first question is about candy, and the grin she gives Lena lights up the whole carriage.

Something flutters in Lena’s stomach, and she ignores it as Kara stuffs her mouth full of sugar.

-

(Any regret Lena has at taking Care of Magical Creatures disappears once she and Kara compare schedules to find that she has it with both the blonde and Barry.

Muggle Studies is small this year, so Barry’s in her Muggle Studies, too, and her gives her a bright grin across the classroom on their first day, and she returns it in full force.

And when the professor starts going over the class syllabus and it turns out to be some of the most interesting curriculum she’s ever seen, she decides that picking what she wanted is the best decision she made her entire second year.)

-

“I think I’ve a crush on James,” Kara says one day, when they’re out in the courtyard, her head pillowed on Lena’s lap. Something in her stomach drops the second she hears Kara say that, and she isn’t sure why, but she doesn’t like the twisting in her inside.

Still, she puts on her best sly grin, her eyes still shut. “Oh? Do tell.”

“I dunno,” Kara replies, tucking a hand under her head, elbow resting on Lena’s knee. “He’s brave and funny and he makes me laugh. He’s certainly handsome.”

“That’s all?”

There’s silence, and when she opens her eye, Kara’s brow is furrowed and she’s staring up at her with a confused look on her face.

“What do you mean, that all?”

Lena swallows, feeling like she’s said the wrong thing, and she shrugs. “I don’t know,” she replies, and she’s nervous, all of a sudden, which she decides is a weird thing to feel around your best friend.

(It’s also the first time she thinks of Kara as her best friend.)

“It’s just,” she continues, stumbling to find the words to talk herself out of this one. “Usually when people talk about their crushes, they say things about how they get butterflies or their heart races. You get any of those?”

“I guess,” Kara answers, doing her best to shrug when she’s laying down. “Sometimes I see him and it makes my belly swoop, you know?”

“I know,” Lena replies before she can stop it, and she doesn’t quite know how she does, but in that moment, she understands what Kara means.

She thinks that’ll be the end of it, she really does, when James is two years older than them and she can see the way he’s looked at Lucy. But soon, she starts to see the glances they exchange over the table, how Kara’s smile turns shy and she ducks her head, adjusting her glasses and going quiet. She’s fairly sure everyone else at the table notices it, too, and when Maggie catches her eye across the table one night, there’s something like pity in her gaze. Looking at for too long makes something in Lena uncomfortable, so she drops her head and puts another bite of steak in her mouth and falling silent.

After dinner, the Gryffindor catches up with her on the way to the Slytherin dungeon, and they’re quiet for a moment. Lena can feel it in the air, that Maggie has something she wants to say, that she’s deliberating, so she waits until the other girl speaks.

“Kara has a crush on James,” she says, and it’s a statement, not a question. Lena nods, and she doesn’t understand why it makes her feel so unhappy.

“Sorry, kid,” Maggie continues after a moment, clapping a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder.

Lena stops in the middle of the hallway, looking up at the Gryffindor. “Why are you sorry?”

Maggie pauses at that, pales, and there’s a long second where neither of them speak. “Sometimes it can be hard when your friend is in a relationship and you aren’t,” she explains finally, but it feels almost forced, like it isn’t at all what she wanted to say. Lena wants to understand, to ask more, but Maggie makes an excuse and heads off in the other direction, back to her own dorms. After a moment of staring at the empty spot left behind, Lena shakes her head and picks up the pace to the dungeon, and she doesn’t slow down until she’s changed out of her robes and into something to sleep in, curled under to covers of her bed as her mind goes wild and what the hell is wrong with her?

-

Kara starts dating James a month later and Lena hates it. Not that they’re dating, of course, just the way she feels whenever she sees the two of them together, holding hands or making faces at each other over lunch. Well, and the fact that she spends less time with Kara now that’s she got a boyfriend, or that half of the things that come out of Kara’s mouth are about James, or-

Okay, so Lena’s fairly unhappy that they’re dating, but what she hates most about it is herself. She feels like she has to be the world’s worst friend, because she should just be happy for Kara, but she isn’t. She should want to hear Kara gush about her boyfriend, that’s what girls do. But she can’t, and she doesn’t, and she hates herself.

She starts to pull away, and she tells herself it’s only because she’s trying to give them space, but it doesn’t really make sense and Lena knows she’s kidding herself. She’s doing it to avoid the clenching in her chest, the way it makes her stomach hurt when she sees their intertwined hands.

When she finally realizes what the hell is going on with her, she’s stunned. She’s jealous.

Not over James, of course. She’d always liked him until he’d started dating Kara, and he’d been kind and warm to her. But beyond friendship, she didn’t feel anything.

It makes sense, though. Kara’s her best friend, it’s reasonable, if unfair, that she’s upset something might be causing them to see less of each other. And that’s what she tells herself, over and over again until she’s tricked her mind into believing it. She carries on like this for weeks, slowly distancing herself not just from Kara, but from everyone else, too. She talks less at meals, makes excuses for why she can’t go to the courtyard as often, and the whole time, she tells herself the same thing: Kara’s my best friend, of course I’m jealous. She’s my best friend.

It works, too, until one night at dinner she’s listening to Kara speak, and she catches herself staring at Kara’s lips for too long and oh, the whole thing clicks into place. She forces some excuse out of her mouth, some paper she has to do for Magical Theory before standing up and, as calmly as possible, leaving the Great Hall. The second she’s out of the sight of anyone who might be watching, she runs. She speeds for her dorm as fast as possible, flying through the Slytherin dungeon and up into her room. It’s empty, of course, so there’s nobody to see her as she falls to her knees at her trunk, throwing it open and tearing through the contents. She isn’t sure what she’s even looking for, so when she gets to the bottom, all of her things thrown on the floor around her and her hands still empty, she does the only thing she can think of.

She cries.

She hasn’t cried at school since her first year, and she’d been quiet then, contained and soft under the covers of her bed. Now, she is alone in her dorm room and she sobs, loud and ugly and it burns her throat. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she must look like a mess, and all she can think in the moment is dirty, dirty, dirty and fuck, she wishes Lex were here.

She carries on until she feels worn out, hollow and heavy at the same time. She changes into something for sleeping in, wraps herself in her quilt, and stares out the window of her room for hours until she can fall asleep.

The next morning, she stays in bed and skips breakfast, telling Leslie when she asks that she’s fine, she just has a massive headache and maybe feels like she’s going to vomit, she isn’t sure. Willis looks like she wants to call her on her bullshit, but she only shakes her head and heads down to breakfast anyway. She skips her first two classes, one of which is her Muggle Studies class. She knows her absence won’t slip past Barry, and she’s almost afraid he’ll come charging into her dorm himself, armed with soup and orange juice.

She dozes off some time in the early morning, and when she wakes up, it’s to a rapping on the doorway and Maggie leaning against the frame, arms folded over her chest.

“You’re aren’t sick,” she says, no preamble, and crosses the room to plunk herself on the edge of Lena’s bed as she pushes the covers off and sits up.

“My head hurts,” she all but snaps, and Maggie only raises an eyebrow.

“You never miss class,” the older girl retorts. “I’m pretty sure if it were just a headache, you would drag yourself out of bed and go anyway.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You’re Lena Luthor. Plus, even if you did a very good job at staying calm, I saw that look in your eyes as you tore out of the Hall yesterday. I know you aren’t holed up here because of some illness.”

“Yeah, and why am I?”

Lena feels almost as if she’s itching for a fight, and it scares her a little bit. She’s never been a pushover or anything of the sort, but she’s also not a confrontational person, but on some level, she wants Maggie to shout back at her, wants to pull the other girl into a shouting match.

Maggie doesn’t take her bait, rolling her eyes instead. “Because you realized that you have feelings for Kara and she’s dating James and it scares you.”

Lena wants to protest, but her chest deflates at Maggie’s words. She hit the nail on the head, and logically, she’s known this already, but hearing it said out loud is something else completely. She swallows, hard, turning to look at anything else in the room besides Maggie’s piercing gaze.

“I- I don’t know what to do,” she admits, soft. “I- Kara’s my best friend and… And I’m a Luthor, I can’t be gay, imagine what my mother would say? She’d crucify me for this.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Maggie whispers, and she scoots closer to place a hand on Lena’s knee. “I can’t help you with your mom; I’m still trying to figure that one out myself. But what I can say that trying to be something you aren’t isn’t worth it. You need to accept who you are, because this isn’t something that you can change, or force away. This is who you are.”

Lena sniffs, wiping away some of the tears brimming in her eyes. “Thanks Maggie,” she murmurs, shifting until she can lean forward and rest her head on the other girl’s shoulder. Several minutes pass in silence until Lena pulls back, brow furrowed in confusion.

“How did you get into the Slytherin dungeon?”

“Oh, Cat told me the password,” she answers, ignoring the incredulous look Lena gives her. “She told me to go and, I quote ‘drag Lena’s sorry little ass out of her bed and force her to go to her next class before Kiera has a heart attack and dies.’”

Lena snorts, and after a beat, pushes herself out of bed and over to the trunk, pulling out a set of robes she’d hastily stuffed back inside after last night’s episode.

“Atta girl,” Maggie encourages, making her way out of the room. “See you at dinner.”

Lena suffers through her next class, and once when she actually makes it to dinner, Kara practically tackles her into her seat. “I was worried,” she admits. “I mean, you’ve never missed class and-”

“I’m fine,” Lena interrupts, laughing. “I had a headache, I just slept it off.”

Maggie kicks her leg under the table, and she laughs into her mashed potatoes.

-

James and Kara break it off less than two months in, and Lena’d be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved.

When Kara tells her, they’re lying on their backs in the courtyard grass and she mentions it casually, as if it were any other piece of news, like ‘I passed my Charms exam’, or ‘Winn drank all of my orange juice this morning’, and when Lena sits all the way up to look at her, Kara only shrugs.

“I mean, I knew it was coming,” she adds. “He’s always been into Lucy and I… I don’t know. I thought James was what I wanted but I guess he wasn’t, you know?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t,” Lena says, earning herself a laugh. “But I’m going to nod and say I do anyway, if that makes you feel better.”

“Thanks, Lee,” she says. In the moment of quiet that falls between them, Lena can hear the birds chirp and water sloshing in the fountain, but then Kara speaks again.

“You know, Alex and Maggie are dating,” she mentions, and Lena almost wishes there was something in her mouth so she could spit it out in surprise.

“What?”

“Oh yeah,” Kara replies, as if this were obvious news. “Alex told me last night, but I think I kind of knew already. Especially ‘cause a couple weeks ago, Alex was really freaking out about the idea that she liked girls.”

“And it didn’t bother you?”

Kara looks over at her, eyebrows raised. “No? Why would it? I mean, she’s still my sister and I love her, I don’t care who she likes.”

Lena breathes out, nods. “Okay,” she says, and pauses to consider the next words out of her mouth before she says them.

“Because, um, I’m gay, too.”

“Oh,” Kara says, her voice soft, and Lena squeezes her eyes shut because this is it, she’s told her this and now Kara’s going to figure it out, that Lena likes her, and-

When her eyes flicker up, Kara isn’t lying down anymore, and she’s facing her, reaching out to grab her hand. “I don’t care,” she tells her. “It’s not like this changes anything, you’re still my best friend and I love you. But I’m glad you told me.”

Lena nods, takes a steadying breath before smiling. “Thanks,” she whispers, and Kara shifts over to pull Lena into a hug. It’s awkward, when they’re both sitting like this, but it’s still nice.

“So,” Kara starts, when they finally pull apart. “Are you going to give me your address so I can actually write to you this summer?”

“Kara, there’s still more than two months of school left.”

“But the end is coming fast!” Kara protests. “I don’t want to forget, and then I don’t have your address and boom, no contact for the whole summer. I’ll miss you too much.”

The ‘I missed you last summer’ goes unspoken, but Lena can feel it in the air, so she pulls out a small piece of parchment from her bag and jots it down before passing it to Kara, who gives a broad grin as she stuffs the sheet into the wand pocket of her robe.

“We are going to write so much this summer,” she promises her. “By the time we get back to Hogwarts next year, you’re going to feel like we were never even apart. Maybe you can even get your own phone and Winn and I can teach you to Skype with us.”

Lena doubts the last part, but she chuckles anyway. “I look forward to it,” she replies, looking down and realizing her Kara’s hand is still in her lap, the blonde’s fingers wrapped around her own. She considers pulling away, but instead, she just squeezes, smiling when she feels Kara’s grip tighten in return.

Even if the end of the school year is a good while out, talking about it makes it feel so much sooner, so she pushes it away and focuses on the present instead.

“Have you ever been down to the lake?” she asks, rather sudden, and Kara tilts her head.

“Once or twice,” she answers. “Why?”

“Has anybody ever taught you how to skip rocks?”

-

(A week later, Maggie tries to tell Lena about Alex.

When she laughs and says she already knows, Maggie rolls her eyes and stalks off to find Kara, likely for ruining the fun of getting to tell Lena herself and seeing the look on her face.)

-

Once Kara points it out, the impending end of the school year, it seems to make it come so much quicker. Before long, Lena’s being thrown head first into exam season. Most of her free time gets thrown into homework and studying, determined to pass all of her finals with the highest grades she can manage. Hanging out with Kara in the courtyard turns into actual studying, the two of them curled in the grass and pouring over their textbooks. Lena’s confident she could pass all of her exams with ease, but she’s a Luthor, a simple passing isn’t good enough. Her mother will expect E’s and O’s from her, and she may not particularly like the woman, but she’s loathe to deal with the implications of falling short of expectation.

If she’s honest, she’ll admit that she’s running herself into the ground with all the nights she’s staying up to memorize, losing out on way too hours of sleep a week. It catches up to her one morning at breakfast, when she leans her head on to Kara’s shoulder and falls asleep within a minute, the blonde barely able to catch her head before she falls face-first into the bowl of cereal in front of her.

She falls asleep over her books with Winn at the library, too, slumped against the table. Once she even falls asleep in the courtyard, sliding down the wall and into Alex’s lap, who doesn’t bother to wake her up, and when she comes too, Alex’s arm is draped over her stomach, there’s a paperback balanced on her head, and Maggie’s giving her a stupid grin.

When she shifts, the book disappears from her head, and Alex scratches her back once before Lena sits up, glancing around the courtyard. The sun is still high overhead, and a foot or two away, Kara’s curled on her side, blonde hair covering her face and her own textbook clutched to her chest. Lena yawns, stretches her arms out.

“How long was I asleep?” She asks.

“Probably like, two hours,” Alex answers with a shrug.

“And you didn’t wake me up?”

“You’re exhausted, kid,” Maggie interjects. “This has to be the third or fourth time I’ve seen you fall asleep while studying.

“I’m fine,” Lena mumbles, rubbing some of the sleep out her eyes. “And you really can’t call me kid, you’re only a year older than me.”

“Feels like more sometimes, “ Maggie replies, amusement in her voice and she closes her book and sets it aside. “You need to be taking better care of yourself.”

“I’m fine,” Lena repeats. “I need to pass my exams.”

“You’re not going to pass your exams if you fall asleep halfway through them,” Alex points out. “I have half a mind to take you to the Ravenclaw tower tonight and put you into my bed so I can be sure you get some sleep.”

“I’ll take her to the Gryffindor common room,” Maggie offers. “The couch is really comfortable. Or, better yet, I’ll tuck her in with Lucy.”

Lena rolls her eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she replies. “I think I’d rather sleep in my own bed.”

She thinks that’s the end of it, she really does, but when she slides under her covers with her textbook in hand that night, the blankets are ripped off of her and Leslie reaches over to snatch the book out of her hand.

“What the hell?”

“You need to get some sleep,” Leslie says, tossing the book back towards her own bed. “Your friends asked me to make sure you didn’t stay up all night reading. And I agreed, because they've got a point; you’re going to burn yourself out at this rate.”

Lena wants to argue, she really does, but she can feel her own exhaustion creeping into her bones, so she tugs her comforter back over her chest with a huff and presses her face into the pillow. She doesn’t expect to fall asleep right away, but by the time Leslie’s settling into her own bed, Lena’s out like a light.

The next morning, Maggie smirks at her over her goblet, so Lena kicks her in the shin.

-

Lena passes all of her exams just fine, of course, a couple of E’s but for the most part it’s O’s across the board. Maggie throws her arm around her with a cheer when she finds out, and Lena grins even if her cheeks heat up when she notices other people looking at them. Alex laughs, ruffling the hair on the top of the younger girl’s head and ignoring the scowl she gets in return.

On the last day before they leave, Kara and Lena head off to the lake by themselves

When they board the train home, both Maggie and Alex pull her into tight hugs, and she returns them full force before Kara pulls her away into a compartment with Barry and Winn trailing behind them. They sprawl out as always, laughing and talking as they chug past the trees outside,

This year, when she seems her mom standing on the platform waiting for her, she doesn’t shrink into herself or try to look smaller. This year, she squares her shoulder, straightens her back, and tells herself that no matter what her mother and brother have done to the family name, she can still be proud to be herself.

Chapter Text

She writes Kara this summer.

Her mother’s eyes fill with disdain with the first letter arrives and she finds out who it’s from. Leave it to her mother to resent her for making friends only because they don’t fall within her house. There’s much more open sense of animosity in the manor this summer, and it’s almost enough to make Lena bend to her mother’s will, but she hides herself in her room and writes instead, to Kara and Barry and Winn, even Alex and once, Maggie. She doesn’t see any of them, but she doesn’t miss them as bad this summer, now that they write back and forth. She gets used to seeing the downy brown owl that carries the Danvers’ mail, grown used to opening envelopes and having two sets letters fall out, one from Alex and a considerably longer one from Kara.

She’s decided now that she may be a Luthor in last name, but not in blood, and therefore, she isn’t bound to the ridiculous ideals her mother insists on forcing upon her, to the point that when she sees Maggie at the train station before they get on, she rushes forward and hugs her, unconcerned if her mother sees the red and gold of the older girl’s robes.

She’s done living her life the way her mother wants. She isn’t Lex, she isn’t some perfect little offspring of the Luthor line, and she’s done being anybody who isn’t herself.

She just wishes that confidence would have lasted her all year.

-

The cracks start to form, whether Lena knows it or not, when Kara meets Mike. They’ve gone to the same school for three years before, but neither of them have really met him before now.

She tells her about it in the courtyard, during their first week of school, between discussions of Quidditch try-outs and what they’re going to be studying in Care of Magical Creatures this year. “He’s my potions partner,” Kara says. “It’s a double potions class, Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors. Professor M’orzz wanted us to work with someone of the other houses, and we got paired up.”

“What’s he like?” Lena asks, mostly to prompt Kara to keep talking. The blonde shrugs.

“He seems alright,” she replies. “I mean, he’s cute, seems a little dense, and he doesn’t seem to have the best grasp on the subject, but I don’t think I’m going to hate him.”

“Kara, you don’t hate anyone,” Lena points out, stifling a laugh. Kara rolls her eyes but she grins, and the topic spins away from her potions partner and onto something else.

When he comes up in conversation again, it’s more than a month later. They’re by the lake this time, Lena sitting cross-legged while Kara has her legs pulled into her chest, head resting on her knees and her heels dug in the dirt.

“Mike asked me out today,” Kara says, casual. Lena’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline, but the other girl is still looking out over the water.

“And?”

“I said no,” Kara answers. “I mean, I kind of like him, but I don’t know. If we dated and broke up, we would still have to be potions partners, which would be kind of awkward.”

“That’s a fair point,” Lena replies. “Just don’t jump into anything you aren’t ready for.”

Kara flashes a smile, tilting her head so that her blonde hair falls forward over her knees. “I won’t,” she promises. And really, Lena thinks that the end of it.

It is decidedly not the end of it when she catches Kara dropping him off to a class on her free period, reaching up to press a kiss onto his cheek before he disappears into a classroom. She turns to walk away, but when she sees Lena planted in the middle of the hallway staring at her, she freezes in place before, slowly, making her way where he friend is standing.

The second Kara’s beside her, Lena seems to thaw, and she jumps on her the moment she opens her mouth.

“Since when have you been interested in Mike?”

What haven’t you been telling me? Is what her brain whispers.

The name comes off of her lips with a bitter twist, and she hopes it’s subtle, but from the way the blonde seems to flinch a little, it’s likely not.

“He asked me out,” she replies. “I mean, what’s the harm?”

“Yeah, like three weeks ago, and you said you turned him down.”

“Yeah, but he asked me out again yesterday, I said yes this time.”

Lena raises her eyebrow, folding her arms across her chest. “So he asks you out a second time and you say yes, just like that? Do you even like him?”

“He seems nice enough,” Kara justifies, frowning. Lena considers pushing on, but she backs down when she sees how defensive Kara’s getting and switches gears, trying to steer the conversation onto something else.

-

(Maybe it starts because she’s upset with Kara. Maybe it starts because she’s alone and Kara has a boyfriend.

But maybe it doesn’t matter how it starts, just the fact that it does, because one day Veronica Sinclair corners Lena alone in the hallway, backing her up until Lena’s back hits something solid.

“Don’t tell me you’re not gay, that you don’t want it,” she says against Lena’s neck, low and husky. “Just confirm it. Tell me you want me to.”

Lena’s throat feels thick and her heartbeat is frantic and she only has to nod for a second before Veronica’s kissing her, pressing her against the wall, hard.

When teeth scrape her neck, it tears a strangled moan from her lips and she feels dirty.)

-

They get into a proper fight about Mike after the first couple of meals he sits with them. It’s the first time Kara introduces him to any of them, Lena included, despite the fact that she’s been seeing him for upwards of a month. Something about him puts Lena off right away, and while it may be the fact that she has feelings for Kara that has her searching to find something wrong with him, it doesn’t excuse what she notices.

He just seems so… possessive of her. He’s always got his arm around her, making sure she’s always into his side even if it seems like she doesn’t necessarily want to be. She’s seen the way his fingers tighten over her when Kara smiles at James or jokes with Barry.

It makes Lena’s skin crawl, the way he acts like she belongs to him in some weird sort of way.

But it doesn’t just end with the boys, either, expanding out to Lena as well. She and Kara are certainly affectionate in their friendship, and it doesn’t escape Mike’s notice, to the point where he catches them holding hands in the hallway and forces himself into the space between them.

(Lena’s hand burns when it drops back to her side.)

She’s frustrated with it all, and by the time Kara stops to ask her what she thinks of Mike, she feels everything building in her chest before she snaps. It starts with one snarky comment, leads into two, and when Kara throws something smart back at her, it creates an argument. Lena’s never really yelled at someone in anger before, and she doesn’t start now, but it’s glaring and harsh comments and the set of her jaw that leaves her shaking at the end, and tears brimming in Kara’s eyes when the brunette stalks off, and it starts a vicious cycle of Lena avoiding Kara.

First, she skips their Care of Magical Creatures class. She isn’t sure she actually means to, but she’s halfway there when she stops, considers going to class, and turns around instead. She doesn’t do anything flashy, either: she goes back to the Slytherin dungeon and to her room, curling up on her bed to study for her Magical Theory exam later in the week.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Leslie asks, and Lena shrugs.

“Didn’t feel like going,” she responds, ignoring the stunned look the other girl gives her.

Next, it’s skipping meals. She doesn’t go to lunch at all, but she’s hungry once dinner rolls around. She thinks about going, she really does, but instead she asks Willis to just grab her some food and sneak it back. Leslie rolls her eyes, but she does it anyway, and Lena pours over another textbook with a roll in her hand until she needs to sleep before she passes out.

She slips into the Great Hall for breakfast early the next morning, and she eats fast, in and out before any of friends are there. She runs into James on her way out, and he looks like he wants to say something, but instead, he lets her pass in silence.

By lunch, she already misses her friends, and she tries to sit with them, she really does, but when she walks into the Great Hall and sees Mike sitting in her spot, his arm around Kara, she turns on her heel and leaves, growling in her stomach be damned.

She’s stalking back to her dorm when she hears running footsteps behind her, and Barry catches up with her easy, barely breaking a sweat.

“What do you want, Barry?” She hisses, and later, she’ll feel bad for the way she spits his name, but she’s in such a foul mood that it barely registers in the moment.

“You’re avoiding her,” he states, simple.

“I’m avoiding Mike,” she corrects, folding her arms over her chest as she keeps walking, staring straight ahead of her as if Barry weren’t even there. “If she happens to be everywhere he is, well, that’s her fault, not mine.”

“Doesn’t this seem childish to you?” He asks, and there’s an almost pleading note in his voice as he stops in the middle of the hallway, feet frozen. “You’re upset about her boyfriend and you’re punishing her for it. You haven’t been coming to meals, and you even skipped her Quidditch match, and you know how excited she was for it!”

“Her boyfriend is immature, possessive, and a player and I don’t want to be around him,” she replies. “Just because that’s the company she wants to keep, it doesn’t mean I have to subject myself to it.”

“It’s not Kara’s fault you’re in love with her!” He nearly shouts, and Lena freezes, swallowing hard before she turns to face him.

“What?”

“It’s not Kara’s fault,” Barry repeats, quieter, and Lena feels like she’s going to explode.

“Well, it’s not mine either!” She snaps. “I didn’t want this either, you know! In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a Luthor, Barry; being gay isn’t something I chose! None of this is what I chose, so don’t blame me!”

“Don’t blame Kara,” he says. “And stop avoiding her, because honestly? When you’re mad at her, you kind of turn into an asshole.”

Lena falters, and she feels her expression go soft, the fight drained out of her. She wants to reach out, apologize, but Barry’s walking away before she can find it within herself to move.

There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach as she stands, rooted to the spot, that she’s going to ruin her life if she keeps going on like this.

-

She finds Kara sitting alone the next day in the courtyard, sat atop one of the walls with the fountain with a book in her lap. She looks small, folded in on herself, and she doesn’t see Lena walking over until the other girl stops in front of her. When she looks up, her glasses are askew and she’s clearly shocked. She places a hand on the wall and pushes herself up off the ground. Lena spent the entire walk here trying to figure out what she was going to say, but now that she’s here, her mind goes blank.

“Hi,” she whispers finally.

There’s something unreadable and guarded in Kara’s eyes. “I thought- don’t have you have a class right now?”

“I do,” Lena admits, running a hand through her hair. “But this- you’re more important.”

Kara sighs. “It doesn’t feel that way when you’re avoiding me,” she replies, and it’s fair, but it still makes Lena flinch, leaning back against the fountain as she bites her lip.

“I’m sorry, I know it wasn’t fair,” Lena replies, and she stops because she can’t think of anything to say that isn’t ‘I love you and hurts to see you love someone else who clearly doesn’t deserve you’.

Kara shakes her head, swallowing visibly. “I- Lena, you can’t do that,” she says. “You can’t just avoid me when you’re upset about something, that’s not- that’s not how friendship works.”

“I know, Kara, I’m so sorry,” she tries, but Kara interrupts her.

“You’re my best friend, Lena, but this whole thing with Mike is- I just… I feel like I can’t love him and you at the same time.”

“You love him?”

It comes out softer than she intended, and to her own ears, it sounds fragile, like a wounded animal. Kara stops, and some of the tension she’s been carrying leaks out of her shoulders. Neither of them likes to argue with the other, especially when it gets them both so wound up.

“I don’t know,” she admits, rubbing a hand over her face before it trails up into her hair and pulls tight against the strands. “I just, my feelings are so confusing, and I feel like I’m bottling them up because I can’t talk to you about them, but you’re my best friend, Lena! This is the kind of stuff I want to be telling you about because I’m so confused-”

Lena cuts her off by pushing off from the fountain and grabbing her wrist, tugging until Kara’s let up on the grip she’s got on her scalp. She hesitates before pulling the blonde into a hug, and for a moment, and she’s afraid Kara will pull away, but then there’s arms coming up to wrap around her back, squeezing tight.

“I’m sorry,” Lena whispers, as Kara presses her face into her shoulder, wet tears starting to fall on Lena’s robe. “I’m so sorry, Kara, you’re my best friend and I never want to make you feel like this again.”

“S’okay,” the other girl murmurs, muffled by the fabric, but from the way Lena’s heart cracks in her chest, it doesn’t feel okay. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she answers, and she wonders if Kara knows what exactly she means when she says it.

-

(Her apology to Barry is just as emotional, and she finds herself crying into his robes when he pulls her against him, telling her over and over that it’s okay until she believes him.

He tells her he loves her, and when she echoes it, she wonders when they became so close.)

-

Lena doesn’t go home this Christmas. She writes to her mother about her intent to stay at school, and she’s meet with little to no resistance. Holidays with her family have been pointless and empty ever since Lex lost himself, and she’s so tired of it that she decides to stay.

When Kara finds out, she tries to stay at Hogwarts, too, insisting that it isn’t fair that Lena’ll be staying at school alone over the break. She makes a case for it several times, until one night at dinner, Maggie mentions rather softly that she’s staying, too, which means Lena won’t have to be alone.

This gets both of the Danvers girls offering to stay for the break, and when the two of them work together on something, it’s hard to change their minds. Finally, they fold when Maggie reasons that if they both stay at school, Eliza will be heartbroken, and it isn’t fair if only one of them remains at the castle and the other goes home. Neither Kara and Alex seem happy about it, but they head back across the lake to the train with the rest of their friends, leaving Lena and Maggie back at Hogwarts.

They aren’t the only students, either. They aren’t really close with anyone who decides to spend Christmas at Hogwarts, but they do recognize several of their faces. One of the many that stays behind is Mike, and Lena’d be lying if she said she wasn’t happy that Kara was going home and away from her boyfriend for a while, even if she was left behind with the boy.

The professors tend to be far more lax when it comes to the Christmas holidays, and so Maggie has little trouble bringing Lena into the Gryffindor common room. It’s warm and lovely and the few students that are there don’t even question her presence. A few even smile at her, and Lena returns it, her grin genuine.

They spend the first night curled up on opposite ends of one of the couches by the fire, wrapped in red blankets and facing each other.

“Why didn’t you go home for Christmas?” Lena asks, when it’s getting later and she feels like she might start yawning soon. “I thought you loved your family.”

“I did,” Maggie says, a bitter laugh punctuating her words. “And I thought they loved me.”

Lena’s brow furrows, and she tilts her head, confused, but she waits for Maggie to speak again instead of interrupting.

“I told them I was gay before I left for school this year,” she explains. “And, you know, I really had hoped they would be happy for me, that I had a girlfriend, that I loved her and she loved me and I was happy, but no. They called me a dyke and a disgrace and they told me that the moment I got on the train, that was the last time they wanted to see me.”

Lena’s eyes feel warm by the time Maggie’s finished talking, and when she sees the other girl’s eyes turning wet, she tosses the blanket off of her legs and pushes herself to the other side of the couch to wrap her arms around Maggie. Neither of them cry, but they hold each tight on the couch until they fall asleep like that, Maggie with her back against the couch and Lena on top of her.

They wake up the next morning, Christmas Eve, still sprawled out on the couch and Lena expects it to be awkward, but it isn’t. They simply get up, go to their rooms so they can change into new clothes, and head down to meet back breakfast.

It’s nice, Lena thinks, to be able to walk into the Great Hall in a sweater and a pair of soft jeans. Maggie’s already there, a result of not having to walk all the way to the Slytherin dungeon to change. She’s got a flannel thrown on over a plain tee and she’s already spooning eggs onto her plate when Lena slides into the seat across from her. Several feet away, at another table, she catches Mike sneering at her from where he and all his friends are sat, and she glances down at the small amount of space between him and the blonde girl beside him before clenching her jaw and turning back to her plate. Maggie turns around throws him a glare over her shoulder, and Lena laughs into her porridge.

They spend their Christmas Eve morning in the Gryffindor common room and play games of Wizard Chess and Exploding Snap and Go Fish. After lunch, they take to exploring the castle and the grounds, just walking the halls and talking. They make their way through the courtyards and around the lake, slipping back inside through the greenhouse and taking stock of the more tame plants they see before heading back inside the main building of the castle.

It’s in East Wing they find a nasty surprise. They’re strolling through one of the far halls that sees less traffic when they start to hear voices in the distance, high pitched giggling mixed with a guy’s low register. Normally, they’d ignore it, turn and head in the other direction, but Lena knows she recognizes that voice, feels a pit forming in her stomach, creeping closer and peering around the corner and-

-There’s Kara’s boyfriend, with another girl pushed against the wall and his face in her neck. He doesn’t see Lena staring, at first, when he’s distracted, but the girl looks up and her jaw drops before she whispers his name.

Mike looks up and freezes when he sees Lena. His mouth opens and closes several times before he finds words to say.

“You better not tell Kara,” he threatens her, his eyes hard. “Or I will make sure you regret it.”

By now, both Lena and Maggie have stepped out from behind the wall, and the blonde who Mike is holding, a third-year named Eve, pushes him away from her with disgust.

“You said you broke up with her!” She shouts, before turning on her heels and running off down the corridor. Mike watches her go for a moment, throwing Lena a glare before following after Eve. There’s a long moment of silence after he disappears before Maggie lets out a sigh.

“Holy shit,” she whispers, and Lena only nods.

Catching Mike in the act of cheating on Kara certainly puts a damper on their Christmas spirit, but the agree to put off thinking or dealing with it until after the holidays have ended, when Kara is actually back at the castle. Instead, they end up running into Headmaster J’onzz and Professor M’orzz, who recruit both of them into helping set up the Great Hall for dinner.

Lena’s never actually decorated for a holiday before, but when Professor M’orzz turns on what she tells them are muggle Christmas songs and Maggie starts wrapping her in garland, it turns out to be far more fun than she expected it, and by the time they’re done, the Great Hall looks more wonderful than she’s ever seen it, making it more than worth all the glitter in her hair.

That night, Maggie drags her back to the Gryffindor dorms, and instead of falling asleep in the common room again, Maggie lends her a pair of pajamas and they curl up on the twin bed, lying back to back so that they can both fit on the small mattress. It’s just comfortable enough for her to fall asleep quick and easy, dozing out first.

When she wakes up, she’s surprised by the amount of presents in the room. She’s heard that for the students that stay over break, the house elves leave their gifts at the feet of their bed, but Lena’s surprised to see her own mixed in with Maggie’s, silver wrapping paper mixing in with gold.

When Maggie wakes up, giving her a knowing smile like she expected this, Lena’s whole chest feels warm.

-

When Christmas time ends, the castle refills with all of the other students. Lena’s excited to see her friends again, especially Kara, but it also serves to remind her of Mike and what he did. She knows she has to tell her, but after everything they’ve already been through over him, she’s scared of starting another fight.

When she confesses this to Maggie, the Gryffindor does the first thing that comes to mind: she tells Alex.

Alex is, of course, furious. If it weren’t for Maggie there to calm her down, Lena is sure Alex would be charging off to beat some sense into Mike herself. Instead, they get her to uncurl her fists and take a couple deep breaths before asking what they should do.

“Kara’s going to want to hear it from you,” Alex tells her, and Lena nods. “You’re her best friend, and you’re the one who actually saw them.”

“I know,” she replies. “But Mike is still a sore subject between us, I’m afraid she’ll get upset with me or she won’t believe you.”

“She’ll still believe you,” Alex insists. “She might try to convince herself you’re lying, but give her a couple minutes and she’ll believe you. It might help if Maggie comes with you, because she saw it, too.”

“Okay,” Lena says, nodding. “Will you come, too?”

She doesn’t mean to say the last part, but it slips from her lips before she can stop it. Alex raises an eyebrow, her head tilted.

“You want me to come?”

“It can’t hurt,” Maggie suggests. “I mean, she is your sister, after all, and having you there might… make her feel more comfortable? At least if you’re there, it might seem less like Lena’s coming after Mike and give off more of a ‘we love and care about you’ vibe?”

“Um, sure,” Alex agrees, but she still looks a little thrown off.

They find a time when they all have a free period with no class, gathering in the courtyard and waiting for Kara to get there. The nerves in Lena’s chest skyrocket the second Kara steps outside, and she pushes it down to force a smile.

“Hey guys,” Kara says, plunking herself down beside her sister. “What’s up?”

Maggie glances over to Lena, giving her a small nod, and Lena swallows. There’s really no point in delaying it, but she should be gentle, leading into it-

“There’s something we need to talk to you about,” she all but blurts, cursing herself when she sees the crinkle that appears between Kara’s eyebrows. “It’s, um…”

“What’s wrong?” the blonde asks.

“Listen Kara,” Maggie jumps in, patting Lena on the knee once. “Lena and I stayed here over the break, and um, while we were here, we saw Mike.”

There’s a drawn-out pause before Kara’s head tips forward. “And?” she prompts.

“...He was making about with another girl,” Lena finishes.

A long silence stretches between the four of them. Alex reaches out to place a hand on her sister’s shoulder, but Kara shrugs her off, quietly getting to her feet and walking away without a word. Lena moves to follow her, but Maggie catches her wrist and Alex shakes her head.

“It’s best if you just give her some time,” the older Danvers suggests. Lena sinks back down the ground, stomach churning, and she knows she shouldn’t feel bad for telling her the truth that she deserved to hear, but her chest still feels tight with worry.

She can’t take her mind off of it for the rest of the day, her mind caught up on Kara. She doesn’t see her in the halls or at dinner, which is unusual for Kara ‘never-miss-a-meal’ Danvers.

She’s still thinking about it when she’s getting ready for bed and one of the Slytherin first-years peeks her head in the doorframe. “Lena?” She says, her voice wavering, and Lena wheels around to see a dark-haired girl she doesn’t recognize standing there.

“Um, can I help you?” She asks, and it comes out confused rather than harsh.

“There’s a girl outside the common room,” the younger girl says. “She, um, she asked me if I could get you for her, she seemed upset?”

Kara.

Lena mumbles her thanks to the first-year as she brushes past her and down the stairs, breezing through the common room and right out of the doorway of the dungeon. Sure enough, the blonde is standing right outside, draped in an oversized hoodie and leggings. Her eyes are puffy from crying, and the second she sees Lena, she launches forward and throws herself against the other girl. It breaks Lena’s heart, as she reaches up to wrap her arms around Kara as the sobs start.

“I can’t-” she chokes out. “I can’t believe that he- he cheated on me the second I left the castle and- I loved him, Lena, I loved him and he cheated on me and I broke up with him, and- and he was just on his knees, saying it wasn’t what I thought, that it didn’t mean anything, and he was just begging me to take him back, but- it didn’t feel real and he- he- he-”

“Shh, Kara,” Lena soothes, rubbing a hand over the other girl’s back. “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay, I promise. I know it hurts, but it’ll get better eventually. You deserve everything, Kara, everything.”

She feels the blonde sniff and nod into her shoulder, and she wonders if loving Kara so much is ever going to stop breaking her heart.

-

(An hour later, when she steps back into the common room, Veronica catches her by the elbow.

Lena shrugs her off and they don’t speak the rest of the year.)

-

At her best friend's request, Lena attends Quidditch matches whenever Kara is playing. They win some, and they lose some, of course, but for the most part, they aren't all that significant to her life as a whole, save for one.

This one is only Quidditch match Lena will ever remember vividly. She gets there five minutes before the players have to start lining up, and Kara's quick to pull a bright yellow Hufflepuff scarf around her neck before practically skipping down to the pitch, laughing when Barry throws one of his gloves at her when she teases him for taking too long to put it on. She can’t hear the conversations from all the way up in the stands, but she can see the way they grin at each other like idiots before they mount their brooms.

It’s Hufflepuff against Ravenclaw, and despite the fact that Lena plunks herself in the front of the Slytherin section, Maggie is right there beside her, a single dot of red and gold against silver and green. Leslie even shows up, dropping down onto Lena’s other side with a smirk.

“Wearing your girlfriend’s scarf, huh?” She teases.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Lena replies with a scowl, but her cheeks are red and suddenly she feels warm despite the early February air, tugging at the fabric wrapped around her throat.

“She’s oblivious,” Leslie sighs, rolling her eyes.

Maggie snorts. “Welcome to my life,” she says. “This is what it’s like every day with her.”

Lena opens her mouth to retort, but the words come out in a jumbled stammer. “I- I’m not, she’s not, it- it isn’t like that!”

“Yeah, okay,” Leslie mutters, in a tone that makes it obvious just how much she doesn’t believe Lena.

The match begins, and all three of them turn their attention onto the game. Right out of the gate, a Ravenclaw chaser gets her hands on the quaffle and throws it for a hoop, only to have Kara block it before a point is scored. Barry hangs back, eyes scanning the pitch as he waits for the snitch to come into play.

Lena hasn’t been in to Quidditch all that much ever since Lex went psychotic, but she still finds it fascinating to watch. She’s never cared much for playing, but as a sport, it’s fun to observe. It becomes even more interesting when the snitch is let out and Barry takes off like a rocket, the Ravenclaw seeker only inches behind him.

She’d be lying, though, if she said most of her attention wasn’t still focused on Kara. She fits in the goal zone like she was born for it, pushing back at the chasers with as much force as they throw her. Through the entire game, only two goals are scored against her, and when Barry catches the snitch, they win 20-190.

When the game is over and she’s changed out of her gear, Kara comes bouncing up to Lena with a smile on her face, talking a mile a minute. When she grabs the edge of the scarf Lena’s wearing and tugs her forward, all the air rushes out her lungs when, for a moment, she thinks Kara’s about to kiss her.

“You look different in yellow,” Kara says instead, fingering the fabric. “But it’s nice. I like it.”

She pulls back, grabbing the other girl’s hand and pulling her over to when Alex is appearing in the distance, and Lena swears that her heart is pounding hard enough to crack her chest open.

-

Kara invites her to come stay at the Danvers home this summer. Not the whole time, of course, the first couple of weeks. Barry’ll be there, and Winn is trying to convince his mother over a series of pleading letters. Lena wants to, would say yes in a heartbeat if she could, but she forces a wavering smile and tells Kara she doubts her mother would let her.

Kara understands, of course, but her face falls anyway and it makes Lena ache. Even as close as they are, the one thing Lena’s never really told Kara about is her family. She’s mentioned her mother, and maybe Lex once or twice, but talking about them is a whole new battlefield. Kara seems to be able to understand not to press it, giving Lena her space when it comes to her family.

When they get on the train home and it begins to chug away from Hogwarts, the carriage buzzes with energy. Winn’s managed to weasel permission from his mother to spend time at Kara’s, and now that he’s going, it’s only Lena who isn’t. It makes her feel set apart, to a point, but she pushes it aside to smile because this is the last time she’s going to see her friends for three months, she wants it to end happy, even if there were some ups and downs of this year.

(Mike’s words come back to her when she thinks of downs. His whole ‘you’ll regret this’ schtick was cheesy, sure, but thinking about them makes her uneasy, and there’s a little voice in her head that warns her to be careful, that it might come back to haunt her.)

The excitement holds over the entire trip, and when they pull into the station, Kara points out her adoptive mother in the crowd, practically vibrating with energy as she squeezes Lena’s hand.

“I’m sorry you can’t come,” she says, pulling away from the window. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Lena replies, tugging the blonde into a tight hug. When she tries to lean back, Kara only holds tighter. Lena laughs.

“You have to let me go eventually,” she chuckles, but Kara shakes her head.

When the blonde finally lets her go, Lena almost wants to wrap her arms around her again, but instead she gives Barry and Winn a hug each before walking away, dragging her luggage behind her.

She doesn’t even make it all of the way off the train before Maggie catches her leaving, grabbing her elbow and pulling her aside into an embrace.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” she advises, and when she steps back, she places one hand on Lena’s shoulder and the other on her cheek, wearing a soft grin. “I mean it. You deserve a lot of good in your life, Lena. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

“I will,” she promises, and she means it.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Lena dreams of Lex.

It’s always dark, black skies and shadowy trees, black water on the shore. Sometimes, she can even see the moon, but it’s colored in dull shades of gray. Everything is dark.

Except for Lex. He glows, almost as if he were ethereal, an angel.

(She finds it incredibly, bitterly ironic.)

Sometimes, he’s young. He looks the way he did going into his second year at Hogwarts, with those silly, bushy curls and dopey grin. Other times, he is tall and looming and his head is shaved, like when he sheared off all his hair somewhere within his descent to madness. It was the only thing he ever did that made their mother upset, cutting off the locks she had so adored when he was a child.

But he always smiles at her, the same look he had always saved for only her, his baby sister.

“Do you miss me, Lee?” He taunts, but his face stays frozen, every part of him unmoving. “Do you miss your big brother? Do you miss me while I’m rotting in a cell far, far away?”

And she wants to scream, wants to shout at him. How could you do it, why? How could you do this, why didn’t you love me enough not to do this, Lex? But she can’t move her mouth, can’t move her anything, frozen to the spot as his lips curl up and his teeth shine through.

“I did it for you, Lena,” he says, still wearing that stupid grin, and she feels like she’s drowning. “Everything, all of it. I did all of it for you, Lena.

-

(Sometimes, she wakes up and she wonders how the unforgivable curses must have sounded on her brother’s tongue.)

-

The first delivery from the Danvers’ owl makes Lena’s entire week feel brighter.

It comes in almost half a month since the end of her fourth year, in a long yellow envelope that feels quite heavy in her hands for a letter. When she opens it, several sheets of paper fall out, and she only has to skim through the to realize that it’s not just from Kara and Alex, there’s one from everyone who’s been visiting them, even James.

Her eyes water when she holds them, and it makes the pain of not being with them a little easier.

She takes her time to read every letter, writes one back to everybody.

Kara’s is, of course, her favorite. It’s three times as long as the rest, and every word feels warm. If she concentrates, she can hear the way it would sounds off of Kara’s lips.

She doesn’t have as much to write back about, when she’s cooped up in the house all day, but she does her best to write Kara a letter just as long as the one Kara had sent her.

Lillian makes her disapproval known yet again when she sends the letter off, but Lena brushes her off, watching the owl fly away with the envelope in it’s claws.

There’s a reply from Kara only a little more than a week later, and with each exchange, Lillian’s scowl grows in time with Lena’s smile.

(The entire time, Kara is writing about how Lena should really consider getting a cell phone. Even Barry has one now, she writes. If you get one, we could all talk all the time!)

By the time the summer ends, there’s a drawer in Lena’s bedroom full of paper covered in different scrawls, and she almost considers packing them all up and taking them with her to school. She doesn’t, but she settles for stashing them between the slats under her bed before leaving.

Her mother tries to give her some speech before she leaves, something about getting older and her duty as the last of her family name, but she ignores it, turning away and getting on the train the moment she can.

She doesn’t have to worry about trying to find her friends, because she can hear Kara’s chatter coming from one of the first compartments. Lips quirked up at the corners, she pulls her suitcase behind her as she steps into the carriage where Kara and Winn are already sitting. They both look up when she comes in, and Kara chirps her name once before shooting up out of her seat to throw her arms around Lena, pulling tight enough that the air rushes from her lungs. Lena laughs, breathless.

Kara doesn’t let her go for at least a solid minute, and when she pulls back, there’s a slight flush creeping up the blonde’s cheeks. She shrugs it off when Kara grins at her before wrapping her in another hug.

-

Lena’s quick to pick up on the fact that Kara’s been acting… strange since the beginning of the year.

It’s just little things, usually, like how she catches Kara’s cheeks turning red, how she starts to stammer more often. It’s weird, and Lena would be lying if she said it didn’t feel significant, but she can’t place her finger on why.

She mentions it to Maggie one time, but the older girl laughs to herself, and when Lena gives her a confused look, she suggests talking to Alex. The way she says it sounds odd, like she’s playing at something Lena isn’t getting, but it’s fairly valid advice, so she tries asking Kara’s sister.

Alex is less helpful than she had hoped or wanted, rolling her eyes at Lena with a fond smile and telling her to just go ask Kara, why don’t you? It’s frustrating, and even more so when she asks Barry and he gives her the exact same thing, despite the fact that he says it a lot less knowingly than Alex.

She doesn’t talk to Kara, because somehow, going up to her best friend and saying hey, you’ve been acting weird lately and I have no idea why seems wrong, somehow. Instead, she chalks it up to Kara just being Kara, and they go on with their day to day lives.

They’re both still in Care of Magical Creatures again this year, but it’s split into two periods again this year. Instead of Kara and Lena being in the same class this year, the Slytherins and Gryffindors have been given the same slot. Out of all the houses, she doesn’t know any Gryffindors in fifth year save for Mike who, unfortunately, is also in her class. He spends a good portion of the period glaring at her, before getting reprimanded by their professor for not paying any attention to the lesson. For the first time since their first year, she and Kara don’t have any classes together. She has Muggle Studies with Barry, and Transfiguration with Winn, so it isn’t too bad. And, of course, they still spend time out in the courtyard pretending to study.

For a good while, at least the first three weeks of courses, it seems like any other year. She and Winn go to the library, Kara drags her outside all the time, and everything is normal. Her crush on Kara is as present as ever, and she finds herself staring more and more.

Maggie, of course, is still teasing her about it, but she’s gotten even more insistent. She starts making hints, too, that range from subtle to in-your-face upfront. It feels as if she’s pushing Lena towards Kara, especially when Maggie starts joking about locking them in a closet together.

“You never know,” she says one day, when they’re walking to lunch together. “She might have feelings for you, too. Maybe you should try this revolutionary thing, it’s called talking to her.”

“She doesn’t have feelings for me,” Lena scoffs. Maggie laughs, rolling her eyes.

“How can you be so sure?”

“She’s my best friend,” Lena replies. “And she’s Kara, she doesn’t have feelings for me. I would know.”

“Does Kara know you have feelings for her?” Maggie counters, raising an eyebrow. Lena nearly stops dead in the middle of the hallway, before picking up the pace, causing Maggie to jump forward to keep up.

“I don’t know,” Lena mutters. “But she’s also pretty oblivious, I think I would notice… and she just- she doesn’t have feelings for me.”

Maggie doesn’t reply as they step into the Great Hall, only shaking her head and making her way towards the table.

She disappears from dinner at some point, and Alex is gone only minutes later. Lucy makes a sly comment about the reason for their absence that has James and Lena snickering into their goblets. Winn looks embarrassed, of course, but it’s Kara’s reaction that takes the cake, coughing and choking on her own tongue while Barry pats her on the back. Once she’s recovered, she buries her face in her hands and whines, something about that’s my sister and I was trying to eat.

Lena chuckles, placing a hand on Kara’s knee and bumping their shoulders together. “They’re teenagers, let them have their fun,” she says.

Kara snorts, head still down. “You sound like a grandma,” she points out, voice muffled, and Lena scowls when the table erupts in laughter.

(Barry calls her grandma for almost the entire rest of the year.)

-

It’s two days later that Kara convinces Lena to skip lunch and meet her outside. Lena agrees, because it’s Kara and if it’s something the blonde deems important enough to miss a meal over, it must be serious.

When she gets there, it’s empty save for Kara, leaned against the wall and fidgeting, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Lena steps out into the sunlight, and Kara stalls in place when she sees her.

“Is everything okay?” she asks, crossing the courtyard.

“Um, yeah,” Kara replies, and she glances down at her feet before looking back at Lena.

“What did you want to-”

“Alex told me you have a crush on me,” the blonde blurts. Lena feels her heart skip a couple beats before it picks up like a jackhammer, pounding against her ribs.

“She did?”

Her voice comes out soft and a little fragile, but she can’t even hear it over her own pulse. Kara’s staring at her with wide eyes, and it’s obvious this isn’t the way she wanted this conversation to go.

“Yeah, but like,” she stammers, before launching into a fast-paced rant that Lena absorbs none of. Kara’s stumbling over her words, and when there’s a momentary lull in the middle of her rambling, Lena takes it and jumps in.

“Kara, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes. “But it’s- I would never do anything to hurt our friendship, it doesn’t have to mean anything, I understand if you want some space-”

“What- Lena, no!” Kara all but shouts, cutting her off. “It’s- that’s the last thing I want!”

“I… I don’t understand,” Lena says, struggling to think of something else she can say, but her train of thought effectively stops when Kara lunges forward and kisses her.

Lena freezes. There’s a hand on her hip, one on her cheek, and Kara’s lips are on hers. After a long moment, Lena feels herself start respond, arms coming up over Kara’s shoulder as she tangles her fingers in blonde hair.

At some point, Kara pulls back to say something, but she can barely open her mouth before Lena tugs the girl back to her. She’s known she’s wanted Kara since she was fourteen. Now, she’s a month shy of sixteen, it’s been almost two years and she’s afraid that when she lets Kara go, she’ll disappear like it never happened.

When Lena finally lets her grip loosen and they break apart, she lets her forehead fall forward onto the other girl’s shoulder with a huff. Kara laughs, high and breathless, eyes half-closed.

“Tell me that meant something to you,” Lena whispers, and her voice sounds almost pleading.

“Everything about you means something to me,” Kara replies, so earnest that Lena’s eyes water.

“I didn’t realize it at first, how I felt about you,” she continues. “But then, at that Quidditch match, when I saw you wearing my scarf, I… I think I just knew then, y’know? That you were what I wanted.”

“I knew since you were dating James,” Lena admits. “I was- I was so jealous of him.”

“Since James?” Kara breathes. “Lena, that was our third-year, you-”

“I had just turned fourteen, yeah.”

Kara makes a soft noise at the back of her throat, and when Lena lifts her head, the blonde is looking down at her with soft eyes. “I’m sorry I made you wait,” she says, her voice like a hum. Lena laughs, pressing her face against Kara’s neck to muffle the noise, because of course this is something she would be apologizing for.

(Any other sorry Kara might try to give is forgotten when Lena starts pressing soft kisses to the first bit of skin within reach of her lips.)

-

Fittingly, Maggie is the first person who finds out about the… developments in their relationship.

They don’t even have to tell her, either, because she takes one look at the two of them at dinner, pressed against each other and bumping shoulders with easy smiles, and she just knows. She raises an eyebrow at Lena across the table, and when the younger girl tilts her head, confused, Maggie glances back and forth between her and Kara before flat-out smirking, shoveling a forkful of vegetables into her mouth. Lena feels her cheeks tinge red, but she tips her chin up, grins like a preening cat because, yeah, she’s still riding high on the thrill of Kara’s lips and she’s pretty damn proud of it in the end.

Of course, if Maggie knows, succession dictates that Alex is next. They don’t even get to tell her, either, because the second they make it out of the Great Hall, Maggie’s pulled her girlfriend aside to let her know what she noticed, and the two of them are insufferable the next morning with their jokes; the teasing is what clues Lucy in.

The youngest Lane’s grin is cheshire-wide when she finds out, and from there on, everyone knows, because Lucy’s forte has always been in overt innuendos and the endless embarrassment that comes with. Within barely two days, it’s not a secret to anyone in their circle of friends, to the point that even Leslie Willis is in on it.

Except poor Winn, of course, when the jokes manage to fly over his head and he just… doesn’t notice things. Sometimes, Lena thinks he might be the most oblivious Ravenclaw in the history of the school, because he’s the only one she has to tell. To a point though, it’s worth it, because the shocked look he gives her is one of the most amusing things she’s ever seen, along with the red that creeps over his cheeks when she reminds him of the various jokes and jabs Lucy’s made that have really given them away.

Life goes on. Some things change, others don’t.

They still go out to the courtyard to study, but if they were unproductive before, they’re even less so now, because it’s very easy to get distracted away from her textbook by the way Kara stares at her so unabashedly. Or, how she pulls Lena into her lap when she can see the tired ache that slips into her eyes, coaxing her into lying down until there are fingers sliding through her hair and she’s falling asleep.

There’s a lot of making out, too, when they can find themselves alone in places. They sneak off to other places, too, where there’s nobody to see them. Something about Kara makes Lena feel so young and giddy, wrapped up in the two of them.

Their friends tease them, of course, but they’re all happy for them in the end, and that’s what matters. Alex does, of course, give her a shovel talk that talked extensively about what would happen to her if she ever hurt Kara, but it ends with the older girl smiling and pulling her into a one armed hug, so her words lose some of their bite.

It makes her miss Lex, a little bit, because she has no older sibling to give shovel talks on her behalf, to embarrass her by threatening her girlfriend, even if Kara would never do anything to hurt her. She wishes that Lex turned into Alex: protective, caring, present. What she wouldn’t give to be able to introduce Kara to the Lex from years ago, back when he wasn’t crazy and she didn’t feel guilty for loving him.

-

(It makes her entire chest feel warm enough to burst when Kara mentions that Maggie pulled her aside and gave her own version of shovel talk. Lena pulls the older girl into a hug the next time she sees her, mostly on impulse, pressing her face into Maggie’s shoulder and trying not to cry.

What Kara doesn’t tell her about is the clipped ‘be good to her’ and accompanying glare that she got from Leslie Willis.)

-

Now that they’re dating, Kara insists on doing any sort of couple activity she’s never done before (as well as the ones she has), and Lena’s prone to agreeing to anything to keep that bright smile on Kara’s face, so she finds herself being convinced to do the various things the blonde comes up with.

It’s these things that end up with Kara taking Lena on a date to Hogsmeade. They’ve both been before, several times with each other, but they’ve never done it as a date before, which Kara says is ‘a whole different story, Lee!’ and therefore, they have to go together. Lena doesn’t protest, letting Kara wind a scarf around her neck and pull her around the village with a grin.

Kara, of course, plunks down a good amount of money when they stop into Honeyduke’s, paying for both her own sweets and Lena’s, after convincing the brunette to buy almost twice the chocolate she had originally wanted. She goes along with it, only because she knows Kara will run through everything she’s gotten quicker than she thought she would and Lena’s going to end up supplying her afterwards.

They go to Madam Puddifoot’s, too, and while Lena certainly likes the tea they serve, the tea shop itself is gaudy and a little unnerving. Somehow, it’s managed to stake a reputation as a date spot, and Kara claims that’s a good enough reason for them to go,
There’s couples at nearly every table, sure, and it’s a small, crowded space, but Lena doesn’t mind it at all when Kara smiles at her over her cup and her eyes crinkle at the corners.

From there, they make their way all over Hogsmeade together. Lena buys new quills at Scrivenshaft’s and a couple of books at Tomes and Scrolls, and they stop at Sprintwitches Sporting Goods to look at broomsticks, Kara practically drools over some of the newer models before Lena all but pulls her out by the hood of her robe, pretending to be exasperated the whole time.

They meet up with Maggie and Alex at Three Broomsticks for Butterbeers, and at some point, Barry and Winn show up, too. Barry’s laughing about something, and there’s a faint red flush creeping up Winn’s neck and onto his cheeks. They slide into the round booth beside them, Barry ordering them each a drink while Winn pointedly ignores him and starts a conversation with Alex . Lena shifts closer to Kara in order to make room, and the blonde responds by wrapping an arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to her temple. Maggie, of course, pokes fun at them for being ‘so sickeningly cute’, but Lena just smiles, content.

(She ignores the fact that it feels like someone’s watching her when she presses her lips to Kara’s cheek, because when she looks around, she doesn’t see anybody staring.)

When they leave the inn, getting ready to head back to Hogwarts, they find that it’s just started to snow outside, small white flurries drifting in the air. They turn translucent when they hit the ground, not ready to start sticking quite yet, but if Lena were of the mind to be cliché, she would call it magical.

On the way back, Maggie catches Lena alone to let her know that she’s going to stay over Christmas break again. Lena’s confused, of course, because she knows Alex and Kara’s mom offered to let her come home with them. She got the same offer, but Lena knew her mother would never let her go, so she was just going to stay at the castle rather than return to the manor.

It registers, after a moment, that Maggie’s staying because of her. When Lena asked her if that was the case, already knowing the answer, the older girl only shrugged.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” she says, as if it’s that easy. Maybe for her, it is, but sometimes Lena feels like she still isn’t used to the way her friends act so selfless for her as if it comes naturally to them.

There’s so much Lena wants to say, so many things to think Maggie for, but the words get trapped in her throat, so she throws her arms around Maggie, her grip tight, and they both pretend that Lena doesn’t cry.

-

There are hundreds upon hundreds of things Lena would do for the simple reason that Kara had asked her to. However, there are a couple things that Lena won’t do, and some that she can’t.

When Kara asks her to come home with the summer, she freeze, hands stilling in blonde hair. Kara keeps talking, faster, nearly tripping over herself as she tries to get words out of her mouth.

“I know you couldn’t come last summer, but we missed you so much, and it’s James’ last year, and Cat’s too, but I’m not sure she’s coming anyway,” she rambles, and part of it relaxes Lena, just a little. “But I- I missed you last year and it’s obviously going to be worse this summer because like, I’m going to have to go three whole months without getting to kiss you, which sucks, and-”

By now, she’s sitting, and Lena reaches out to press a hand on either side of her face, staring at her with gentle eyes until Kara slows to a stop, falling silent.

“Kara,” Lena starts. “I would love to come to your house this summer, but I don’t think I would ever get permission to go from my mother, you know how she is.”

Kara frowns, gaze dropping to the ground, and Lena leans forward to press her lips against the other girl’s forehead in some semblance of apology. When she leans back, Kara is looking back up at her with big, blue eyes.

“Just try, please?” She asks. “Think about it, it would be so much fun.”

Lena sighs, but Kara is still looking at her like that, so she finds herself nodding and agreeing to write to her mother and see what she can do.

-

(She never does, because she gets an answer without having to ask.

The letter comes when she’s sat down at a meal, falling right into her lap when she leans back from her plate to say something to Winn. The return address on the envelope is her own, with her mother’s name traced above it, Lillian Luthor written out in swooping lines and curls.

She’s gotten letters from her mother before. They tend to be more like lectures, short and formal and always so biting. She’s never received a Howler, but she’s always been a little afraid her mother would send one eventually, to scream at her about what a disappointment she was so the whole dining hall could hear.

This one is different. It’s cryptic and feels so, so wrong when she opens it. Her stomach sinks before she even reads it, and she nearly drops it once her eyes reach the bottom of the page.

She knows, her brain whispers. She knows, she knows about Kara, oh my god-

A drip of bright red falls onto the envelope, and she realizes, distantly, that she’s given herself a paper cut.

“Kara?” She whispers, her voice shaking, and the answer comes from the hand that rests on her knee and the warmth that leans into her side. Her throat feels thick, and she doesn’t look up from the paper when she speaks.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to come to your house this summer.”)

-

If she focuses on the blue in Kara’s eyes instead of the trees passing outside the window, she can convince herself to forget the letter her mother sent, so she buries her nose in blonde hair and pretends she isn’t walking into the lion’s den the second she steps onto the platform

The ride isn’t silent, but it feels subdued. Winn and Barry talk, softly, but Kara just reclines across her seat and allows Lena to situate herself on top of her, pressing her cheek onto the other girl’s chest. Her heartbeat is solid, steady, and the comfort of it makes Lena feel more sure of herself.

The moving of the train beneath them has always been calming, and the rhythm of it pulls Lena into a sort of half asleep state, where she’s aware of the arms wrapped around her and the body pressed against her but time doesn’t feel quite real. She dozes a little, in and out, she tries to shake it off, pushing herself higher up on Kara’s chest and just trying to breathe her in, because honestly?

She doesn’t know how she’s going to survive three months, these three months, trapped with her mother while Kara is so far out of her reach.

Still, Kara whispers comfort in her ear, trying to convince her that it’ll work out. Lena takes the hope in her voice, holds onto it, because something about Kara’s unyielding optimism makes her want to believe, too. She tries, she really does, to think of a happy ending for them with her mother, even if she knows that’ll only make it hurt worse when things go wrong.

Near the end of the trip, she does her best to be conscious, to enjoy her friends and their presence while she still can, while they’re still right here in front of her.

“You could always run away,” Barry suggests, and although he’s joking, there’s a little glint in his eyes. “Hitch a ride to the Allen house and hang out with me.”

“Um, excuse me?” Kara replies, sitting up and pulling Lena with her. “The Allen house? Don’t you mean the Danvers house? She’s my girlfriend.”

“I live closer,” he fires back, taunting. “If I wanted to, I could ride out to Lena’s on a broomstick in like, an hour and a half, maybe. Beat that.”

Lena shakes her head, laughing with Winn when he catches her eye. By now, Kara is pouting, and Barry’s smirk is triumphant, as if he’s won something out of this.

When the train pulls into the station, they all take a moment to stare out the window, the gravity of the moment washing over them. Lena feels her chest beat hard once, twice before calming.

Nearly wordless, she stands up and hugs Barry, then Winn, the former whispering a ‘good luck’ in her ear while the latter grips her tight and tells her that he loves her and he’s there for her no matter what.

When she turns, Kara is already standing and reaching for her, sliding her arms around Lena and tugging her forward. Lena laughs, a little, when she stumbles and Kara catches her. They stare at each other for a moment before Kara’s pressing forward.

It feels messy, a little desperate, but it’s perfect and it’s them and she doesn’t mind.

When she pulls away, Kara tries to follow, eyes still closed and her mouth parted. Lena just about giggles.

“Kara,” she says, trying to keep her voice firm despite the grin that’s growing on her face. “If you don’t stop kissing me, I won’t be able to get off this train.”

“That sounds like a great plan to me,” Kara replies, sealing their lips together again. Lena accepts it, for a couple of moments, before sliding her hand down from the blonde’s neck to her chest, pushing her back gently.

“I have to go,” she whispers, as Kara brings her own hand over Lena’s and tangles their fingers together, squeezing softly as their foreheads bump together.

“I know.”

Lena stops, breathing deep. There’s a piece of her that wonders what would happen if she refused to go home with her mother, if she dug in her heels and kicked up dirt and threw a fit. What would Lillian do?

(Lena wonders if she would let go. If all Lena’s had to do this whole time was push back against her mother with enough force, if that would free her somehow.)

It stings when her hand slips out from under Kara’s, the look on the other girl’s face when Lena takes a couple steps back, grabbing her trunk and pulling it out of the carriage. She glances back at her friends, all staring at her from inside the compartment, and she offers them her best impression of a smile before she turns and walks away, lips falling the moment she’s out of sight.

Every foot closer she is to getting off the train, to her mother, she feels herself hardening, like she’s trying to build up her walls as fast as she can. The water behind her eyes stops, and she feels her face set, lips in a straight line and her chin held high.
And it’s a good thing, too, because when she sees Lillian across the platform, she can see it in her mother’s eyes, the disappointment and the annoyance and, somewhere, the anger.

Lena feels her walls climb higher and she knows, before she’s even left the station, that it’s going to be a hard summer.

Chapter Text

The letter is the only thing she can think about on the way home with her mother. It hangs over her head like a rain cloud threatening to burst, and no matter how much hope Kara had tried to instill within her, she’s terrified. The floorboards of her home feel like they’re littered with eggshells, and she takes care to avoid her mother as much as possible.

The house feels like one big bomb, poised to explode, and if Lena so much as breathes in the wrong direction, everything will go up in flames.

Days goes by and her mother says nothing. Lena relaxes, a little, but she still knows her mother. The other shoe is hanging above them somewhere, ready to drop the moment her mother decides is right.

That moment is when Kara’s first letter of the summer arrives, a week into the break. Her mother intercepts it, corners Lena in the dining room and tosses the envelope on the table in front of her.

She can see it in Lillian’s eyes, this when it’s all about to come crashing over her. Her mother rounds the table as Lena reaches out to grab the letter, and she stops only a few feet away.

“Rhea contacted me, had something she wanted to tell me,” Lillian starts, fingers trailing on the hardwood.

“Rhea?” Lena asks. The name rings a bell, but it’s not one she can point.

“Rhea Daxam,” her mother says, and Lena’s heart drops, because it’s Mike. She knows, knows he didn’t forget what happened their fourth-year, that this is his way of getting back at her, his revenge for telling Kara.

“She had some interesting information for me,” Lillian continues. “About what exactly you’ve been getting up to at school this year. Her son Michael told her about the way you’ve been… carrying on with that Hufflepuff girl at school. Really, Lena, this is what you’ve chosen to spend your time on, who you’ve chosen to spend it with?”

“Mike is a selfish, self-entitled prat who’s only upset because Kara broke up with him when I told her he was cheating on her,” Lena spits, her anger catching up to her quick and sudden, years of resentment for her mother bubbling to the surface. “And yes, I have been ‘carrying on with that Hufflepuff girl’, because she’s kind and warm and loving, something you have never been to me in my entire life-”

The slap that cuts her off is unexpected but not surprising, a stinging pain against her cheek that effectively silences her. Her mother’s eyes are hard, raging, when she takes another step towards Lena and backs her up towards the wall.

“This behavior is not befitting of a Luthor,” she snarls.

“Well, I guess it’s lucky I’m not a Luthor, then,” Lena retorts, raising her chin.

Lillian almost laughs, and the cold twist of her lips looks almost like a grin. “You may not be my blood, Lena, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a Luthor,” she says. “Your father carried on with that squib for months, years, until you were born. And when your mother died, he brought you home on a whim. Not because he loved you, no, but because of the guilt . You may be your father’s bastard, but you still carry his blood, and it makes you a Luthor whether you want to be or not.”

Lena’s mouth falls open, lips parting as the air rushes from her lungs, but Lillian isn’t finished. “Either you end things with this girl, or I will,” she threatens, fixing Lena with one last hard glare before disappearing up the hallway, leaving her daughter pressed against the wall with a wrinkled envelope and a quickly reddening cheek.

-

(It takes a long time to write back to Kara.

She doesn’t even open her letter right away. There’s none from Alex or anybody else, just a long, rambling one from her girlfriend. I didn’t want to wait for anybody else to finish before I sent mine, it reads. Then I’d have to wait to send it, and then it would take longer for yours to get back to me, and I already miss you too much. I wish you were here with me.

Lena puts it aside, not even able to read it all in one sitting. It feels fresh when she digs in, the mark on her cheek. She considers pouring out everything that has already happened, to confide in Kara, but she decides against it.

When she finally starts her letter back, her hands shake, and she ruins sheet after sheet of parchment starting over when her handwriting looks sloppy and wholly unlike her own.

The final product comes out short, a little off, but Lena feels so tired and exhausted that she sends it anyway, two weeks after Kara’s had come.

She pretends she doesn’t think of the blonde, waiting and waiting for her to write back.)

-

Her communication with Kara over the summer is stilted and infrequent. She writes to Kara when she can manage it, under the glare of her mother and the growing pressure in her chest. The responses come right away, and she can tell Kara knows something wrong. When she asks, though, Lena scrawls an ‘I’m fine, darling, don’t worry’, and the lie tastes bitter.

“I thought you were going to end things,” Lillian says, when another letter comes. Lena bristles, staring down at the envelope to avoid looking at her mother.

“When we get back to school,” she replies. “She deserves better than a letter.”

Her mother doesn’t seem to like it very much, but Lena refuses to bend on it. It’s the one thing she keeps telling herself, that Kara deserves better. She uses it to justify their impending break-up as well.

Kara deserves better. She deserves far better than being tied to the the Luthor legacy, she deserves better than whatever being with me is going to cost her.

It hurts, of course, but the more she repeats it in her head, the more she can convince herself it’s true.

There are so many emotions she feels the second she arrives at the train station that she doesn’t know what she feels. Her mother, of course, grabs her by the shoulder and fixes her with a look, telling her to ‘do what she knows she has to’ before releasing her.

The moment she gets on the train and finds Kara, the blonde is all over her, pressing kisses to every inch of her face. Lena stiffens for a split second before her body reacts, tension melting from her shoulders and a fit of giggles bubbling in her chest. No matter what’s happened, she can’t help but smile when Kara grabs her face in both hands and presses their lips together.

There’s nobody else in their compartment yet, so Kara drops back onto the seat and pulls Lena down into her lap. The brunette laughs, pulling back.

“Someone’s gonna catch us,” she points out, breathless. “Barry and Winn will be here any second.”

“I don’t care,” Kara replies, brushing her nose against Lena’s neck before trailing a line of kisses down the other girl’s jaw. Lena nearly gives in for a moment, before she she ducks her head, moving her neck out of reach.

“Kara,” she warns, and the blonde huffs.

“Fine,” Kara pouts, pulling Lena closer to her and sliding her arms around her back, squeezing.

“I missed you,” she hums, and when Lena leans back and looks right into those blue eyes, something cold wraps around her heart when she thinks about her mother’s words.

Either you end things with this girl, or I will.

-

She starts to avoid Kara when their classes start up. It’s easier when they get their schedules, many of their free periods tend not to line up. She still sees her at meals, of course, but they don’t spend as much time together in the courtyard, or anywhere else, for that matter.

She knows Kara can tell something is wrong, but for a good while, she doesn’t push it. Lena thinks it’s because, somewhere inside of her, Kara is afraid that if she brings it up, everything between them will implode.

Her silence doesn’t last, though, but maybe that’s for the better.

Kara convinces Lena to come out to the courtyard on one of the few periods they both have free. Lena considers coming up with an excuse, but she can already the strain she’s putting on both of them.

A little piece of her walks into that courtyard knowing what’s coming.

When she sits down, Kara looks up at her with a smile, but it looks weak, forced. Lena returns it, sure that hers matches, and curls up against the wall. There’s a good foot of space between the both of them, at least, but neither moves to correct it. A part of Lena cracks, because any earlier in the year, Kara would always slide closer, shutting the gap she was always trying to put between. The voice of her mother in her head tells Lena that this is a good thing, for her and the family name, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“You’ve been pulling away from me,” Kara whispers, refusing to make eye contact. Instead, she stares out at the fountain in the middle of the courtyard, lower lip caught between her teeth.

“I have,” Lena confirms, even if it wasn’t a question, because she doesn’t know how else to respond. She’s never imagined the conversation starting like this, so civil, so resigned. She expected tears and accusations and fire, but instead, Kara just looks defeated.

“I don’t- I don’t understand,” she murmurs, finally turning to look at Lena. In response, the brunette turns down to her hands in her lap, swallowing, still silent.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Kara asks, and even though her voice is quiet, there’s irritation slipping into her tone.

“What do you want from me?” Lena says, shaking her head with a bitter laugh. “That this isn’t sustainable? That I’m a Luthor and all I do is destroy things? That I’m here to break your heart?”

“So you’re breaking up with me?”

“Kara, you don’t understand,” Lena argues, and she feels herself starting to get riled up. This is what she expected, the defensive itch, the want to push back. “This can’t- this won’t- this isn’t going to work. My mother-”

“I can’t believe that you’re doing this for your mother!” Kara shouts, jumping to her feet with her fists clenched at her sides and angry tears welling in her eyes as she spins away from Lena.

“Don’t you see? I’m doing this for you! ” Lena fires back, getting up off the ground as she feels herself starting to get louder as well. “You don’t know what she could do to you, and the worst part is that neither do I! You are not something I am willing to risk!”

“I don’t want you to be doing this for me! Lena, all I want is you!”

Lena stops, and her face turns into something of a mask, calm and collected, despite the wet tracks on her cheeks. “Fine,” she says, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the water trickling through the fountain. “Then if I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me.”

“Lee,” Kara whispers, tension slipping from her shoulders with her anger, but she’s cut off.

“Please, don’t,” the brunette whispers, turning her face away as she starts to cry in earnest. Her gaze flickers to door to the castle, only a few feet away. “It’s just going to make this so much worse for both of us. It’s… it’s better if I just walk away now.”

“Don’t. Please, don’t walk away from this,” Kara begs.

“I’m sorry.”

And with that, Lena’s gone.

-

Lena locks herself away from nearly everything after the break-up. She goes to her classes, takes notes and passes her tests, but she doesn’t feel like she’s absorbing anything. She studies on her own in the common room, and she tells herself it’s where she belongs, alone in the green glow that’s always made her uncomfortable.

It’s part of who she is. A Slytherin. A Luthor. She ought to get used to it.

She starts missing meals. She uses it as a way to punish herself, almost unconsciously, deciding to skip dinner when she feels particularly hateful, and she acts like she deserves the hunger that curls in her stomach. When she does go to the Great Hall, she avoids Kara and everyone else like the plague, sitting alone on the opposite side of the room. Or, she would be alone, if Leslie Willis didn’t make a habit of seeking her out and sitting across from her.

“You don’t have to watch me like a child,” Lena hisses over lunch one day, and really, she wishes Leslie would give her any reaction except that smirk or that laugh.

“I’m not watching you,” she replies. “Believe it or not, Lena, I care about you, and you look pathetic eating alone. Besides, I like you better than any of the other losers in this room anyway.”

(It’s the first time she ever calls Lena by her first name.)

Days don’t pass slowly, but they go by in a blur. Lena wonders where all her time seems to get sucked off into, but most of it is put into studying and homework. She’s excelling in all of her classes, but she feels as if she’s nothing, and with every good mark, she feels like less and less. She wonders if it’s a Luthor thing, as if this was how Lex felt.

She can see how it would have driven him insane.

The isolation she forces upon herself is maybe the worst. She misses Maggie’s teasing and Barry’s laugh and mostly, she misses Kara’s smile. But she convinces herself that when she let go of Kara, she let go of them all, convinces herself that she doesn’t deserve them anyway.

This, apparently, does not fly with Maggie Sawyer. It’s the first dinner Lena’s actually made it to where Leslie doesn’t slide onto the bench across from her. She thinks she’s finally going to get a meal alone, and if the thought stings a little bit, she pushes it aside and takes a small bite of steak, chewing slowly to make it last longer.

She’s proven wrong, however, when Maggie plunks onto the empty space on the other side of the table and starts grabbing herself food without hesitation. Lena raises an eyebrow at her, a silent question, but Maggie acts like everything about this is normal.

For a long minute, neither of them speak, until Lena takes it upon herself to break the silence.

“Isn’t Alex going to be mad at you for sitting with me?” She asks. “After all, I’m pretty sure she must hate me now.”

“Alex doesn’t hate you,” Maggie replies, rolling her eyes. “She just thinks you’re being stupid. Which, for the record, so do I.”

“You know I can’t do this,” the Slytherin hisses, keeping her voice low. “My mother knows, Maggie. Can you imagine what she could do to me? Or worse, Kara? My mother may not be Luthor by blood, sure, but marriage might as well be just as good. She is conniving and ruthless and she has never loved me, since the day I showed up. She would do anything to take this from me. It’s easier, safer, to just… not do this.”

“‘Not doing this’ is making both you and Kara miserable,” Maggie points out, stabbing her fork into the air in the other girl’s direction. “Neither of you are happy, it’s obvious. God, don’t you want to be happy?”

“Of course I do,” Lena answers. “But it’s not that simple.”

“It’s only as hard as you make it,” the older girl says. “And you better start listening to me, because I graduate this year. Soon, you aren’t going to have me here to steer you in the right direction anymore.”

“Shut up,” Lena mutters, but she’s smiling now, if it’s still a little sad. Maggie counts it as a victory and takes another bite of her potatoes.

-

(“We miss you,” Maggie tells her, right before the end of dinner. “Everyone misses you, Alex included. And Barry and Winn and even Lucy. We were your friends, too, and we miss you. I miss you.”

Lena takes a swig of juice and pretends like she doesn’t want to cry.)

-

Her mother makes her come home for Christmas.

It feels like a punishment, being dragged away and back to the Luthor manor. The last place she wants to be right now is anywhere near her mother, but when the letter comes with thinly-veiled threats and a commanding tone, Lena knows there’s no convincing the woman to let her stay at the castle for the holiday. Sometimes, it feels like if her mother had her way, Lena wouldn’t be allowed at Hogwarts at all.

She goes home for the break, and her mother is just as biting as she was the entire summer. She lasts two days in before the questioning starts in earnest, and her mother zones in on Kara. Lena’s voice is bitter and brittle when she speaks, fists clenched.

“It’s over,” she all but grits, and for a moment, there’s a look on Lillian’s face that almost looks like pride, before it disappears as quickly as it came.

“Good,” her mother says, nodding. “I know you don’t want to believe me, Lena, but I’m doing this for you, and your future. Imagine what people would say. Being… intimate with another girl, one from an impure family and a Hufflepuff at that? Really, I’m protecting you.”

“Protecting me?” Lena says with a laugh, opening her mouth before slamming it shut and biting her bottom lip to keep herself silent. She can feel the words that want to come out.

Lillian notices, of course, folding her arms across her chest with a scowl. “Go on then,” she encourages, biting. She may be telling Lena to speak, but it’s the same tactic she’s always used to browbeat her daughter into submission. Challenge her, and Lena will back down, submit and obey.

“Say whatever you want to say,” she encourages, and really, Lena’s had enough of her mother by now.

“How can you call this protecting me?” She all but explodes. “Protecting me from what? Ruining your image? You've never cared about what I wanted or who I was!  You have never once tried to care about me in earnest, but you know who did? Kara! She cared about who I was, not whatever Lex turned our last name into! Kara cared about me and you made me get rid of that! I wanted this for years, but I gave it up for you, and you still- you still- forget it!”

She expects her mother to try and hit her again, but she doesn’t give her the chance, spinning on her heels and stalking off towards her room. There’s no sound of footsteps following her, nothing but silence in the hall behind her, and once she’s safely tucked away in her room, she shuts the door and practically collapses against it, and the sobs that bubble in her throat feel like they’re cracking her chest open.

She starts packing before she really recognizes what she’s doing, throwing clothes into the small bag she’d brought things home for break in. Next, a couple toiletries and some personal things before she shoves her mattress up and pulls the stash of letters out from the slats of her bedframe, shoving all of them but one inside before sealing the pack and slinging it over her shoulder.

A crinkled piece of paper in her hand, she makes her way out of her room and sneaks up the hall to the room that used to be her brother’s. The door looms before her, and she has to steel herself before she works up the strength to push it open.

Inside, everything is exactly like he left it, a half played game of chess on a board in the corner and knick knacks on his dresser. Looking at everything for too long makes her head spin, so she pushes it all aside and makes for the closet in the back of the room. It still creaks when you open it, and she’s almost nervous for a second that her plan will fail, before she finds exactly what she’s looking for, propped up in the corner.

Lex’s old broomstick, dusty but still in good condition.

She grabs it without hesitation, trying to ignore the way her heart hurts a little at how familiar it still feels in her hand.

She hasn’t ridden much since her first years at Hogwarts, but she hopes she can still manage well enough for the short journey she needs.

( Hitch a ride to the Allen house and hang out with me, Barry had said at the end of their fifth year. If I wanted to, I could ride out to Lena’s on a broomstick in like, an hour and a half, maybe. )

She’s almost out the door when her mother catches her.

“Running away and taking a piece of Lex with you,” she accuses. Lena opens her mouth to speak, dozens of harsh words on the tip of her tongue, but Lillian cuts her off.

“Leave now, and you can’t ever come back here,” she threatens, and Lena almost grins as she step out of the door and into the night, throwing herself onto the broom and taking to the sky.

With the wind in her hair and the manor disappearing behind her faster and faster, Lena has never felt more in control of her own life.

-

Lena has Barry’s address and she knows what direction to head, but once she gets into to the town where he lives, she has no idea where she is or what she’s doing.

He lives in a wizard’s city, so she doesn’t take great care in being discreet as she lands her broomstick, taking a mostly sheltered dive into a patch of trees and dismounting with little fanfare.

From there, she wanders into the nearest store that still looks like it’s open, presents the person behind the counter with the envelope and asks her if she knows where the address in. The guy working the store is fairly helpful, listing off a series of turns to get there from the shop, but when she blinks at him in silence after he finishes rattling off street names, he simply a set of directions down on paper for her.

She thanks him before leaving, the directions in one hand and her broomstick in the other as she sets off up the street. He’d said it’d be around a twenty minute walk, much faster if she flew, but she couldn’t read street signs from that high up in air, so she makes it on foot.

When she finally comes to a stop outside of the Allen house, there’s a little flare of panic in her chest, because she and Barry have barely spoken since she broke up with Kara. In giving up Kara, she’d given up almost all her friends except Maggie. She knows Barry and they’d been friends for you, of course, but there’s a little part of her that’s worried he’ll turn her away.

She gathers up her courage to knock on the door, a woman answers, soft face and red hair.

“Can I do something for you?” She asks, a little wary.

Lena knows how she must look, a strange teenager standing on their doorstep at this time of night with a firebolt in hand. “I’m, um, a friend of Barry’s,” she says, a little hesitant. “Is… can I see him?”

“It’s very late.”

“Please,” Lena pleads. “It’s important.”

The woman seems to consider her for a second, before disappearing into the house, leaving the door cracked. Lena  stands there, her leg bouncing up and down, until light from inside the house floods the porch and Barry is standing there, his head tilted.

“Lena?” He whispers.

“I, um,” she stammers. “My mother, I- she told me that she was protecting me, that Kara was- and I just- I cracked and I ran away and she told me never to come back and I flew here because I didn’t know where else to go and I-”

By now, he’s stepped outside in front of her, and he cuts her off by reaching out and pulling her into his arms. She falls against him, and the tears come before she could even hope to stop them.

“I loved her,” she whispers into his chest. “I loved her and I threw it away for a woman who only ever pretended to care about me and it was such a mistake!”

He rubs his hand across her back, whispering whatever sounds soothing in the moment, and even when the sobs stop, she cries quietly, even when he pulls her inside, pushing her down onto the couch and placing a mug of hot chocolate into her hands.

And she talks and talks and talks, pouring out everything that happened until she feels empty and wordless. Somewhere along the way, she ends up lying in his bed, Barry curled up on the floor beside her, and she’s so worn out she falls asleep in minutes.

(The next morning, he sits her down at the table and pushes breakfast in front of her, staring at her in silence until she shoves some eggs into her mouth. Afterwards, he pulls out what he tells her is a cell phone, tapping away at it until he hands it to her and tells her to put it up to her ear.

She’s nervous, of course, because Kara’s name is showing on the screen, but when a crackly imitation of Maggie’s voice comes through, she almost bursts into tears again.)

-

Barry’s mother Nora is, quite possibly, one of the nicest people Lena’s ever met. She insists on the girl calling her by her first name instead of Ms. Allen.

“That’s what they call my mother in law,” she says with a laugh, moving around the kitchen as she makes breakfast, and something about the woman’s energy makes Lena smile.

Barry’s father, Henry, is a quieter presence in the house, but still warm. He also insists on going by Henry rather than anything else. He’s the one that reassures Lena she’s welcome to stay as long as she needs to, that they’re happy to have her.

It’s an odd sort of kindness she’s never really felt outside of her friends at Hogwarts. The Allens feed her, offer her a place to stay and let her in on their holiday season. They even get her a good handful of gifts, and when she sees them sitting under the tree on Christmas morning, she tears up.

“I didn’t get you guys anything,” she says, only a couple seconds away from crying, and Barry wraps an arm over her shoulder as he tugs her into his side, grinning in a bright yellow sweater.

“We didn’t expect you to,” he tells her. “Besides, I’ve missed you. Having you here is the best thing you could have ever given me anyway.”

She pulls him into a full on hug at that, fingers gripping the fabric on his back, and she buries a wet laugh in his chest before he shoves her over to the tree and throws a present into her lap.

They go through all the presents under the tree, and there’s just so much joy in the room that Lena spends the entire morning grinning. Even when Lex had still been himself, Christmases with the Luthors had never been like this, and she relishes in not only the normalcy of the holiday, but also the feeling of family it gives her.

Later, she finds Barry on the cell phone again, and when she glances over her shoulder, she sees Winn on the screen. She tries to slip away without being noticed, but then she hears ‘is that Lena?’ and she knows she’s been spotted. Barry beckons her back over, adjusting the phone so the little camera inside of it can see her too. Winn’s image is blurry but even she can see the wide eyes.

“Merry Christmas?” She says.

“Are you at Barry’s?”

His voice, grainy but still very clearly Winn, is filled with shock, and a part of her can’t help the laugh that slips from her lips.

“Um, yeah,” she replies, and she almost feels sheepish. “I kind of… got in a fight with my mother about- some things, so I decided I was done playing her games and when I left, she told me never to come back, so I ended up flying to Barry’s house.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Winn,” she says. “Really, I promise. This was like, the best Christmas.”

They have a nice conversation with Winn before he hangs up to go spend time with his mother. Without speaking, Barry scrolls down his screen until he’s pulling up another name and hitting call, pulling the camera’s view back to himself. For Lena, it doesn’t even register who he’s calling until she sees Kara’s face show up on screen.

“Merry Christmas,” he all but chirps, and the smile that’s spreading on his face feels like it’s less about seeing his friend and more about the sly glance he shoots at Lena.

Kara echoes the greeting, her own voice high and light, and Barry says a few more things that Lena doesn’t really process before she hears ‘anyway, I’ll talk to you later, merry Christmas’ and he’s shoving the phone into her hands. She stares up at him even when she hears her name come through the phone like it’s a question, but he only winks, mouthing a ‘merry christmas’ as he leaves the room.

When she finally looks down at the screen, Kara is still looking at her, shocked. Lena feels her throat go dry, and she just manages to croak out a barely there greeting.

“I- why are you with Barry?”

“I got into with my mom,” she tells her, and something about Kara still makes her want to crack her own chest open and pour out everything inside. The little version of Kara’s face on the screen is somewhat of a poor substitution for the real thing, but she can still see the concern that twists the other girl’s face.

“Are you okay, what happened?”

Part of it makes her laugh, that Kara still cares enough to ask these questions, but she knows if the situation was reversed, she would be the same. She shrugs, not even sure if Kara can see it through the phone.

“I’m okay,” she says, but it sounds a little hollow, and even through the distance and poor images, it’s clear that the blonde thinks so, too. “It’s okay, really, except that she told me to never come back and I’m kind of both homeless and broke, now, and I made so many terrible decisions all for a woman who was never going to love me that I wish I could take back.”

“I- Lena. you don’t seem okay.”

“I’m not,” she admits. “But I- it was a good thing, it has to have been a good thing. Lillian didn’t- she didn’t really love me, and everything wrong she ever did she claimed was to protect me, or for my own good, all kinds of that bull. And now, I’m- I’m free. She doesn’t hold anything over me, she can’t control me anymore. I don’t…. I don’t have to be just another member of the Luthor legacy anymore, y’know?”

“I know,” Kara replies, her voice still coming through cracked. “I- Lena, Barry’s house is hooked up to the Floo Network, I can- I have Floo powder, I can be over there if you need me to come.”

Part of Lena is floored, that after everything that’s happen, Kara is still willing to come all the way out from her house to Barry’s to help make sure Lena’s okay. Another part of her isn’t surprised at all, because that’s exactly the kind of person Kara is. It makes her chest ache.

“You really don’t have to do that.”

“It’s not any trouble, if you need-”

“Kara,” she interrupts, and a small, sad smile takes over her face. “Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. Please don’t come all the way out here, it’s too far. Just- when we get back to school, can we talk?”

“Of course, Lena, I- I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Lena says, and the moment the words fall from her lips, the tension in her shoulders slips away. “I’ll um- I’ll see you at school. Do you want to talk to Barry?”

“Sure.”

As if on cue, he sweeps back into the room and plops down onto the mattress next to her, smiling at her when she passes the phone over to her. He keeps shooting her looks the entire time he’s talking to Kara, and when the call ends, he tosses the phone onto his pillow like it’s nothing.

“So?” He says, eyes bright and tone nearing smug.

She responds by shoving him off the bed.

-

Henry and Nora each hug Lena when they drop her and Barry off at the train station, telling her how much they enjoyed to have her, and that she’s welcome back any time. It feels sincere, and she thanks them several times over before boarding the train.

She isn’t really sure she’s ready to see Kara, to sit with her for the entire ride without being able to say all the things rattling around in her head. On the other hand, sitting alone on the ride home felt like slow torture, able to hear someone’s laughter from the next compartment over when she just feels so, so alone.

The dilemma is solved when she runs into Maggie and gets tugged into her carriage. Immediately, the older girl is wrapping her arms around Lena, and she sighs as she crushes her nose against Maggie’s collarbone.

“You okay, kid?” She asks, making no attempt to pull back, and Lena nods, feeling herself grin.

“Never better,” she breathes.

She catches sight of Alex over Maggie’s shoulder, and a little piece of her is nervous.That piece is promptly silenced when Alex, wordlessly, swoops in to hug her the second Maggie lets Lena go.

“I thought you hated me,” Lena admits softly, gripping the fabric of Alex’s robe.

“I don’t hate you,” Alex insists, leaning back to inspect the younger girl’s face. “I’m just kind of annoyed with you, because I really wish you would pull your head out of your ass and go back to making my sister happy.”

Lena chuckles, and once Alex releases her, Lucy bursts in as if she had been waiting outside. She stops, for a moment, when she sees Lena standing there, but once she takes stock of the smiles everyone’s wearing, her lips turn up into a grin to match.

“Long time no see, Lena,” she says, reaching out to tug the girl into her side and bringing one hand up to ruffle her hair. Everyone laughs as she ducks out of Lucy’s grip, trying to tame down the mess the Gryffindor’s made of her brown locks.

The youngest Lane throws herself into a seat and pulls Lena down into the spot beside her. She rolls her eyes as she falls against the cushion as Lucy props her feet up, heels resting on Lena’s thigh.

“Missed you too, Lucy,” she says, and though it’s meant to be sarcastic, it comes out sincere.

She spends almost the entire train ride smiling, even when Maggie teases her and the other two join in, and it feels more like home than time spent with her mother ever did.

Once they get to Hogwarts, the castle looks just like it had when they left, and part of Lena regrets having to miss the holiday season at school. Still, a greater part of her doesn’t, because the feeling of being free of her mother has her a wonderful sort of dizzy, if a little afraid of retaliation, and the time she spent with Barry’s family was fantastic.

Stepping back into the castle, she catches sight of Kara’s blonde head bobbing in the crowd in front of her, and a part of her wants to run forward to her, but she holds back. They haven’t talked since Christmas, but they’re supposed to meet tomorrow to work things out, hopefully.

(In the courtyard, of course, because it seems like everything important they do happens there.)

Waiting for the next day is nerve-wracking. Lena skips dinner that night, a bad habit she’s going to have to learn to break before it turns into something worse, but thinking about worrying where to sit twists her stomach into knots, so she dodges it, even it she knows Maggie will want to chew her ear off for it later. Instead, she curls up back in her room, unpacking her bag and thinking over what she’s possibly going to say to Kara. She feels like there’s nothing that can justify what she’d done, the pain she’d put them both through for the sake of her mother.

She rides on a hum of nervous energy the next morning, buzzing into breakfast and falling into the space across from Leslie Willis without a speck of protest. The other girl looks at her when she sits down, brow furrowed as she studies Lena, but when she calls her out, the brunette brushes her off, shoving a couple more forkfuls of food into her mouth before rushing off to the courtyard.

Her whole body feels shaky as she props herself up against the wall, studying the cobblestone under the toe of her shoes and waiting, her throat tightening by the minute. The irrational, worried side of her fears that Kara won’t show, that this is her punishment for tearing down the relationship between them, but it goes silent when the blonde appears in the corner of Lena’s vision, stepping outside into the light. Lena’s breath gets caught in her head for a moment, because now Kara is standing here and everything feels so much more real. She thinks about her mother, the threats she made, how scared she felt. She thinks about breaking down the best, most supportive relationship in her life, the mistakes she made.

She thinks about Christmas, how Kara was so willing to zap herself over on a moment’s notice because she thought Lena needed her, and that’s the thought that steadies her, makes her calm enough to function, taking several steps forward until she and Kara are standing by the fountain, only a handful of feet between them that Lena could cross in moments if she wanted to, but she stands still and the silence is thick.

“I don’t- I don’t really know how to start this,” Kara admits, looking away as she reaches up to fiddle with her glasses, pushing them further up on her nose, despite the fact that they weren’t falling.

“Me neither,” Lena murmurs, and she takes a cautious half-step forward. “But um, I- Kara, I am so sorry.”

The blonde lifts her gaze again. “You’re sorry?”

“I am so sorry,” Lena repeats. “I let my mother come between us, I acted on what she wanted instead of what I did, like an idiot, and I ruined us because I was scared. She said- she said I had to end things between us, and if I didn’t, she would and- and it felt like a threat and I was so terrified that she would hurt you, and I thought that it was the only way to keep you safe, but I acted on what I thought was best and I kept you out of it, and I dragged you along for so long because I was too much of a coward to actually break up with you and I am so sorry-”

Lena doesn’t quite realizing she’s crying until she feels big, wet tears sliding down her cheeks, and she squeezes her eyes shut, tight enough that it’s uncomfortable. The next thing she knows, there’s a hand on the side of her face, a thumb sliding over her cheekbone, and when she opens her eyes, Kara is standing in front of her, head tilted.

“Lena, I-” she starts, but the words seem to fail her, so she shuts her mouth for a moment before trying again. “Do you need a hug?”

A part of Lena feels pathetic when she nods, but it’s completely overshadowed by the warmth of Kara surrounding her, and she presses her face into the taller girl’s chest as a small sob wracks her body, her fingers coming up to clutch at black fabric. And even if things between them are still rocky, Kara’s arms feel like home and forgiveness and everything Lillian never was.

She knows, without a doubt, she’s never going to give this feeling up again.

-

Fixing her and Kara is a process. It’s rebuilding, putting pieces back together again, but every time Kara so much as smiles at her, Lena believes wholeheartedly that it’s worth it, no questions asked.

She’s nervous, more than she ought to be, the first time she rejoins her friends at the table, sitting in her usually seat beside Kara. It’s different, now, because touches between them are hesitant, and Lena misses the easy way Kara would rest a hand on her thigh. In a way, though, it’s like the beginning of their relationship all over again, before they had even started dating in earnest, when Kara’s shoulder would brush hers and it would make her cheeks heat up.

Her friends, for the most part, act like she was never gone. Maggie teases her and Alex rolls her eyes and Barry puts his arm around her shoulders with a grin. She studies with Winn in the library like they’ve been doing since their first year and it’s like having a void filled inside her chest, like a part of her is slotting back into place every time any of them smile at her.

And when Kara finally, finally, kisses her again, it’s soft and tender and Lena swears that the ground disappears beneath their feet, that being with Kara is being inside a bubble hovering over the ground.

The routine they fall back into reminds her of the second half of their fifth year, but instead of pushing each other into walls and empty spaces, like the two of them are the only people that exist, she feels so much more open. Instead, it’s tender kisses before class and curling up in each other’s laps with textbooks, managing to do actual studying while still clung to each other. Being with Kara without any part of her mother looming over them is an all new sort of wonderful. They drift into a sort of awestruck bliss for months, and everything that happens between them feels brand new, even when it isn’t.

Lucy and Maggie both rip into them, mercilessly, but it’s still lighthearted, and Maggie assures her how happy she is for them. She’s also quick to remind Lena, over and over, how proud of her she is. Every time she does, a part of Lena aches for Lex, her Lex, the older brother who had loved her so fiercely until he didn’t anymore. But Maggie is there, present and grinning and so damn supportive that Lena still feels like she has an older sibling, even if this one is shorter than her.

When the summer starts to edge closer, it’s a sharp reminder that Lena doesn’t have a home to return to. Granted, she never cared for the Luthor Manor in the first place, but not having a place to live is harder to swallow than she thought it would be.

Barry offers his home, of course, assuring her that his parents already adore her and they’d be perfectly happy to have her. She considers it over the course of several days, and she’s thinking about taking him up on the offer when Kara pitches her the same idea, but with one difference.

“You could come home with me,” she suggests. “Maggie’s been staying with us every summer since she got kicked out, you could always just… come home with me this summer?”

“I’ve never met your mother,” Lena points out. “And… and what if she doesn’t like me, I....”

“She’ll love you,” Kara insists, hands on Lena’s waist as she tilts forward to press their foreheads together. “Anybody would be crazy not to love you, Lee, and she’ll love you because I do.”

Lena’s heart hammers in her chest, and she leans back to look the blonde in the eye. “You love me?”

Kara’s mouth falls open, just a little, shocked speechless. “Um, yeah,” she stammers, once she regains the ability to speak. “I mean, of course I do, I… I, uh-”

She’s cut off when Lena throws herself forward to close the space between them, wrapping one hand around Kara’s neck and kissing her, hard. It starts hungry, a little bruising, but it turns into something soft and warm, and when Lena finally pulls back to catch her breath, she decides that the blues of Kara’s eyes remind her of starlight, somehow.

“I love you, too,” she whispers against the other girl’s lips. “In case you couldn’t tell.”

Kara grins. “So you’ll come home with me?” She asks, and when Lena nods, she kisses her dizzy until the brunette is pressing her face into Kara’s shoulder, chest heaving.

(“I’ve been waiting to spend the summer with you for years,” Kara whispers later, when she has Lena’s head in her lap and hair in between her fingers. “Three months without you is too long.”

Lena’s response is a soft, quiet snore, and Kara just smiles, leaning her head back against the wall and letting the sun wash over her skin.)

-

On the train ride home, Lena sits with her back pressed to Kara’s front and wonders, distantly, if her mother will show up at the platform to get her. She wonders if she would go with her.

There’s something bittersweet about being free of Lillian. The woman hung over her life like a shadow, trying to block out any and all light, anything that might make Lena happy. Without her mother’s looming presence, Lena was able to feel like herself again, to throw herself into her friendships and be content with what she had, be sated, because she didn’t have anyone’s standards to live up to except her own.

But even with all of that, Lillian was still her mother. An adoptive mother, sure, and a horrible one, but she had raised her. Even if she’d been selfish and cruel, there’s still a part of Lena that just wants her attention, her love.

She thinks she wouldn’t go with Lillian, in the end, because the woman could say anything but Lena knew she’d never give her anything but disapproval and disgust.

But her friends treat her like she’s something worth loving, and there’s something about the curl of Maggie’s lips, the crinkle around Kara’s eyes, the warmth of Barry’s arms that makes her believe it.

When the train pulls to a stop, Kara reaches for her, tangling their fingers together. Lena follows, a half step behind, as the blonde leads them onto the platform, over to a woman with the same shade of hair and bright eyes that Kara introduces as her mother.

“Hello Ms. Danvers,” Lena says, rather stiff.

The woman laughs. “You can call me Eliza.” she tells her, reaching out to place a hand on Lena’s shoulder with a smile. “It is so nice to finally meet you, you’re the only thing Kara ever talks about these days”

Lena flushes, head ducking, and Kara opens her mouth to protest. Rather weakly, of course, because Maggie and Alex have appeared by now to confirm that yes, Lena is the subject of Kara’s constant rambling.

(Lillian doesn’t show, but as Kara squeezes her hand and presses kisses to her cheek, Lena decides that her mother’s absence doesn’t quite matter, anyway.)

Chapter Text

Lena has never, in her life, had a better summer than the one that follows her sixth year.

The Danvers home, in contrast to the Luthor manor, is warm and full of light. Usually, Eliza makes breakfast in the mornings, but sometimes Alex and Kara take over for her, smiling at each other over pots and pans and aprons. On more than one occasion, Maggie and Lena get roped into ‘helping’, but it ends with flour everywhere, including Lena’s hair and the back of Alex’s pants.

Barry, Winn, and Lucy spend a week and a half with them, and with some planning from Alex, James comes down to surprise them. The house is a little small for all of them, but they make it work, cramming people into each other’s rooms and onto the couch. It’s certainly not boring, of course, with so many of them to fill any empty space. They play board games, both wizard and muggle ones alike, and Barry takes great pride in beating everyone in Exploding Snap, as usual, and Lena still wins every game of Wizard Chess they play, coming close to losing only when Maggie and Alex team up to try and take them down.

Winn introduces them to several new games, and they spend hours on end playing. Lena’s favorite of them is called Monopoly, but Kara likes the Game of Life, even if neither one of them is all that good.

(They end up having to team up, however, when Kara reaches the first milestone and instead of grabbing a little person to put in the second seat of her car, she pops the one out of Lena’s piece to use.

“I don’t want to marry anyone that isn’t you,” she declares, rather stubbornly, and when she refuses to bend on it or let Lena pick a new figure to represent herself, the brunette gives in and joins her girlfriend.

She feigns exasperation, but there’s something warm in her chest because Kara talked about her and marriage in the same breath and it makes her a little dizzy, thinking about the future.)

When everyone leaves the Danvers home for the summer, Barry manages to convince Lena to come home with him for a couple days. She agrees, mostly, because he tells her his parents are dying to see her, and the Allens were so amazingly kind to her last Christmas. Kara pouts, of course, even after Lena reassures her that she’ll be back in three days, which is nothing compared to a whole summer.

Kara insists on kissing her goodbye at least twelve times before she steps into the fireplace, Barry already gone. Lena lets her, of course, laughing the whole time, before managing to tear herself away and following after Barry to the Allen home.

Henry and Nora are just excited as he said they would be, his mother wrapping Lena in a hug while her father just grins and wraps an arm around her shoulder. Between the two of them, she can understand just how Barry became the kind, warm person he is.

They spend three days showing her the wonder of being able to live in a town full of wizards. There’s magic everywhere, in the streets and the shops and any place else it could be. Barry’s eyes light up as he drags her around to make sure she sees everything, and all Lena can think about is how much she wants to live in wonder like this forever.

Her time with Allens is just bright as the rest of the summer. They even spend half a day visiting Diagon Alley, and Lena’s surprised to see what it looks like when it isn’t full of students shopping of school supplies the week before classes started. They get sidetracked straight away at the owlery, before grabbing ice cream at Florean Fortescue’s and making their way around the small city.

For Lena, it’s like being in a whole new place. She’s gone to get her supplies from Diagon Alley every year since she started at Hogwarts, but her mother was very precise about the whole affair. They came, they got exactly what was on the list, and then they left, nothing more and nothing less. Now, Barry seems intent on showing her anything and everything she may have missed out on.

It feels as perfect as a day can get.

When it’s time to be heading back to the Danvers, she gets a hug from everyone of the Allen family members. Barry holds her long and tight, Nora makes her promise to visit again, soon, and Henry assures him that their home is always open is she ever needs somewhere to go.

She smiles at them before she steps back into the fireplace, holding a handful of green powder. Traveling by the Floo Network always makes Lena a little dizzy, and she stumbles a bit into the cellar. Almost immediately after, she hears loud, thumping footsteps coming down the stairs before Kara appears, grinning.

“Hi,” she breathes, and she doesn’t give Lena a chance to respond before she’s kissing her, hard and eager before Lena pulls back with a grin.

“I missed you, too,” she whispers, dropping her head onto Kara’s shoulder.

(Moments later, she hears something tinkling, and she jumps, nearly shrieks, when she feels something brush against her legs.

Kara laughs, and when she looks down, there’s a cat winding between her legs, big eyes staring up at her as he meows.

“I got a cat,” Kara tells her, as if the evidence isn’t currently purring at her feet. “His name is Willard, he’s very friendly. I think he wants you to pet him.”)

-

The hardest part of going back to school is leaving Alex and Maggie behind. She’s known, logically, that they wouldn’t be coming back to school this year, but it feels far more real when they’re standing on the platform together.

A few feet away from her, Alex and Kara are having a tearful goodbye, the blonde’s lip quivering and her eyes shining. Lena’s more focused on Maggie, however, who has a hand on each shoulder and is staring at her with something almost intense in her gaze.

“You are so, so good, Lena,” she says. “And you deserve to be happy. Don’t let anybody ever tell you that you aren’t, okay? Otherwise, I will fly all the way back to Hogwarts to knock some sense into you.”

The younger of the two nods, to overcome with a sudden rush of emotion to say anything back, and Maggie pulls her into a hug. Lena presses her face into the other girl’s shoulder, and wishes the fabric against her cheek wasn’t so soft, wishing that it was a black robe gripped between her fingers instead of flannel, that Maggie was coming with her. A couple of tears manage to get the better of her, and when they pull back, one of Maggie’s thumbs comes up to skim them off her cheeks.

“I am so proud of you, Luthor,” she adds. “I am so damn proud of you, and don’t you dare forget that. I love you, okay? And I’m always here for you, whenever you need me.”

Lena actually gives a quiet sob at that, and she throws herself back at Maggie, who only gives a wet laugh and wraps her arms around Lena again, one arm coming up the cradle the other girl’s head while the other rubs circles into her back.

When she finally tears herself away Maggie, it’s only to pulled in by Alex. Alex is actually taller than her, just by a little, so she pushes herself up onto her toes and hooks her chin over the redhead’s shoulder, swallowing hard. Alex and Maggie have become like older sisters to her, helping to close the Lex shaped gap in her chest, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive the year without them. She thinks her second year, of Maggie scaring off Siobhan Smythe when the girl came after her in the halls, and her third year, when she fell asleep in Alex’s lap and the girl just let her sleep there, one arm on her back.

They aren’t even gone yet, but she thinks a part of her already misses them.

When Alex lets her go, she swallows more tears as Kara grabs her hand, squeezing. Her girlfriend’s eyes are just as wet as her own feel, and when they say their final goodbye to Alex and Maggie, Kara’s grip tightens as they start walking to the train.

Once they’re tucked away in their own compartment, before Barry and Winn have made it, Kara leans down to wipe the tears from Lena’s cheeks before capturing the brunette’s lips with her own. It starts tender and gentle, but something sparks in Lena’s chest and she pushes up, hard, turning the kiss fervent and needy until she’s pushing Kara down onto the seat and falling down into her lap.

“Barry and Winn will be here soon,” Kara whispers, breath hot against Lena’s cheek. “And literally anybody who walks by can see us right now.”

“We’re in the back of the train,” Lena replies, lips ghosting over Kara’s jaw and down her neck before she makes her way back up the blonde’s jaw. “Just… kiss me, please?”

Kara does, reaching up to tangle her fingers in dark hair, and they stay locked like that until Winn loudly announces his presence walking into the carriage, Barry following behind him less than half a minute later, and Lena slides into the seat beside Kara with a pink flush over her cheeks and a slight rim of red still around her eyes.

(They don’t mention Alex, Maggie, or Lucy the whole way, but from the way Kara drops kisses onto her forehead, she knows they’re both still thinking of them.)

-

Her first day of her last year, she sits next to Leslie Willis and watches the first years get sorted.

The other Slytherin has a noticeable lack of snarky things to say, and Lena knows Leslie would never admit it, but she thinks it’s nostalgia. They’re graduating this year, after so many years spent within the castle halls, and even if they’ve still got months left to go, it’s hard not to think of everything they do as the last.

Their last first day. Their last time watching a sorting. The last time they’re going to listen to Headmaster J’onzz welcome them back to school.

After dinner, they walk back to the Slytherin dorms together. Their last year rooming together, Lena thinks, but she doesn’t say it out loud.

“How was your summer?” Leslie asks, and Lena’s a little surprised, because the blonde actually seems genuine.

“It was good,” she answers. “Had a lot of fun. You?”

“Wasn’t bad,” Leslie replies, a sly grin crossing her lips that means Lena definitely doesn’t want to ask. “You know, the Yule Ball will be held at Hogwarts this year.”

The brunette nearly stops dead, blinks. Honestly, she’d forgotten, in all the chaos of the summer, that they would be hosting the ball, that students from other schools would be coming in.

(The Triward Tournament’s been cancelled for years, ever since the tragedy that ended with a death of a student and the rebirth of something evil. However, in much more recent years, they’d reinstated the Yule Ball in the name of tradition, arguing that, provided there was no tournament, there was no danger in hosting the ball by itself.)

“I guess I forgot,” she admits with a shrug.

“I’m surprised you remember anything at all from this summer,” Leslie teases. “Considering how frazzled your brain tends to get every time your girlfriend kisses you.”

Lena feels herself flush, and when the other girl looks over to see the red blush on her cheeks, she cackles.

“Oh, Lena,” she says, still laughing. “How I miss our talks.”

Lena only scowls, but her lips tug up anyway because yeah, she did kind of miss Leslie, too.

-

(Lena’d be lying if she said she didn’t think of the ball sometimes, when her thoughts would drift off into space. Of Kara, draped in a long dress, spinning and laughing her way across the dance floor.

Sweet Merlin, has this girl turned her into something of a giddy, lovestruck mess.)

-

(Lena asks Kara to go to the Yule Ball with her five weeks into the year, out in the courtyard while Kara’s got her head in Lena’s lap, taking a break from studying to bask in sunlight instead.

“Of course I’ll go with you,” Kara says, reaching up to pull the brunette into a kiss. “I thought that was assumed already.”

“It was,” Lena replies. “Just thought I’d confirm.”

Kara laughs. “We have to go dress shopping, you know,”

“There’s shops in Hogsmeade, we can go on the next trip.”

“Together?” Kara asks, brow furrowed. “Aren’t you, like, not supposed to see your girlfriend’s dress? Isn’t that the rules?”

“That’s a wedding, darling,” Lena corrects with a snort. “Besides, who else would we go shopping with? Barry and Winn?”

“I see your point,” the blonde concedes. For a minute, Lena thinks of Maggie and Alex and she misses them, before she shakes it off, bending down to press her lips to Kara’s instead of thinking.)

-

As much as she loves Kara, there’s nobody better than Winn to study with.

Sometimes, Lena feels guilty, feels like she doesn’t give him the credit he deserves, doesn’t show him how much his friendship means to her. In a way, if it weren’t for Winn, she wouldn’t have any of what she had right now.

The first time Winn ever misses a study session with her, without telling her beforehand, is in their seventh year of school together, two months into the first semester.

At first, she just assumes he’s late. It happens often, him rushing into the library ten minutes after he was supposed to get there, his hair messy and an apology on her tongue. It was something Lena got used to, Winn’s consistent tardiness, so she pulls out a textbook to get a jumpstart on a reading she has to do, and waits.

After fifteen minutes have passed, she’s starting to wonder if he’s going to show. After twenty, she’s nervous, and even more so after thirty. By the time three quarters of an hour have gone by, she shoves all her books into her bag and leaves, caught somewhere between being nervous and being frustrated.

When he doesn’t show up to dinner that night, that’s what makes her nervous.

She’s confident he’s holed up in the Ravenclaw tower. A piece of her thinks that maybe he’s just asleep, that he’s overworked and tired and he’s been passed out since after lunch, but she knows that’s wish fulfillment. She thinks of her own past behavior, skipping meals and avoiding their friends and it makes her stomach drop.

She wants to go there right after dinner, but she talks herself out of it, because she knows he might just need space. That maybe something is rattling around in his head, that he needs to process it, alone.

The next morning, he shows up to breakfast, and she feels herself grin before she notices how tired he looks. When she speaks, he barely galnces at her, doesn’t smile. She takes him in, a little disheveled, disinterested, more focused on his food than anything else, and when he leaves, he barely utters a goodbye before leaving.

Lena knows what he’s doing, because she’s been there before. He’s pulling away.

(If she’s being completely honest, there’s been little signs since the first couple of weeks of September, but she didn’t think that they could be serious. And now, suddenly, it’s like he’s changed overnight, a quiet, sulking shell. He reminds her of a ghost.)

He’s gone again at lunch. Lena can see the way Barry’s jaw tightens a little, when he realizes Winn isn’t coming, the way Kara’s fingers press hard into hers whenever she glances at the entrance to the Great Hall and she doesn’t see him coming in. Lena’s own worry feels thick in her throat, when she thinks of herself and Winn and the way he’s acting.

“I’ll go talk to him,” she decides, offering Barry a smile and pressing a quick kiss to Kara’s cheek before slipping out of the hall. She makes her way to the Ravenclaw tower, and when she gets there, she’s met by the bronze eagle-shaped knocker on the door. She considers waiting until a Ravenclaw comes to enter and asking them to get Winn, but the knocker feels like it’s almost… looking at her, so she steps forward, a silent invitation.

“What gets broken without being held?”

Lena stops, thinks. As a child, she and Lex had made a game of telling each other riddles, sometimes making up their own. It’d taught Lena to think on her feet, to come up with answers in odd places.

“A promise,” she answers, when it finally dawns on her.

The door opens, and with a slight bit of hesitance, the door swings open. It’s lunchtime, so the common room is mostly empty, save for a student or two that stares at her, but she brushes them off, because suddenly, the only thought in her head is how beautiful the Ravenclaw tower is.

Right away, she feels more at home here than she ever did in her own common room. It doesn’t quite carry the same warmth the Gryffindor common room had when she’d walked in, but this is different, because when she looks at the constellations painted on the high ceiling, the natural light coming in through the windows, she can imagine living here, feeling at ease. It makes her feel something a little like regret, envious over something she didn’t get to have.

Pushing her feelings aside, she asks one of the kids curled up in a chair where she can find the seventh year dorms for boys. He looks confused, maybe a little taken aback by the silver and green she’s wearing, but he points out the right staircase anyway, telling her to take it all the way to the top. She thanks him, mustering a small smile before starting the seven flight climb to Winn’s room.

At the very top, there’s two different doors. She pops her head in the first one, but it’s empty. The second one, however, is where she finds Winn, sitting on a bed she presumes is his own, his back propped against the wall. He’s bent over a textbook, eating a bar of… something, and when she clears her throat, he jumps, startled.

“Lena?” He says, mouth full. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” she answers, leaning against the doorframe. The whole scene reminds her of their third year, when she realized she had feelings for Kara and locked herself away in her room until Maggie all but dragged her out in time for dinner.

“Why?”

She raises an eyebrow at him, and he nods. “Point taken.”

“I know you’re pulling away from us,” she says, and even though her voice is gentle, he winces, dropping her gaze. She takes a step into the room.

“You know you can tell me if something’s wrong, Winn,” she tells him. “Whatever’s going on, you can tell me, you know?”

“It’s nothing, Lena,” he replies, shaking his head. “Really, I’m fine, I promise.”

“Winn,” she presses, and when he looks up at her, there’s something that looks like vulnerability in his eyes. It throws her off for a moment, before she crosses the room to place herself on the end of the bed.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she urges.

“It’s… it’s really nothing,” he tries, but it falls flat to both of them. “It’s just… sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in with you guys anymore, like… like I’m an outsider.”

Something in Lena’s chest aches the minute the words fall from his lips. “Winn, I…” she tries, but her voice fails her, because she thinks back to all the times he’s fallen quiet at meals, how much time she spends with Barry and Kara in the courtyard when Winn’s tied up with class.

“Winn, I… I am so sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” he assures her. “‘I’m just… being stupid, I guess.”

“It’s not stupid,” she protests. “Your feelings are valid, I’m… I’m so sorry you feel like that. But you know we love you right?”

“I know,” he mumbles, but it sounds lackluster.

“I’m serious,” Lena repeats. “Winn. You are one of my best friends. You were the first person in this entire castle who decided to be my friend despite my last name. You were the first person to be really and genuinely kind to me since Lex went crazy. In fact, you’re the only reason I met anyone else. All of our friends, Kara, all of that? I only have that because of you, Winn.”

Winn’s eyes are wet, like he’s moments from crying, and he reaches out to hug her. “Thank you,” he whispers..

“You matter so much to me,” she says into his shoulder. “To all of us. And I’m so sorry we ever made you feel like you didn’t. We love you so much, we’ll be better, I promise.”

I’ll be better, she thinks to herself, and she holds him tighter.

-

(Despite what they said, Kara was insistent on Lena not seeing her dress, and in the end, they made the boys go with them, Barry with Kara and Winn with Lena.

Lena doesn’t mind, in the end, because after what Winn confessed to her, she’s eager to spend as much time with him as possible.)

“What about this one?” Lena asks, coming out from the dressing room in the first of many options. Winn stopped, looking her up and down before shrugging his shoulders.

“It looks good,” he tells her. “But it’s not very… you, you know?”

She hums, glancing at the mirror beside her. It was a nice dress, granted, but the shade of green was so bright, so pronounced, that something about it made her look even more pale than she was, a little too washed out. She nods, steps back behind the curtain and sheds it for another.

“This one?” she asks again, once she’s changed into the second ensemble. He shakes his head.

“It’s better, but…” he trails off, thinking about what to say. “It’s still kind of… flashy. You look like you’re wearing the disco ball version of a ball gown.”

They go through several dresses until they find the best one. Lena likes it from the moment she tugs the zipper up, and when she steps into view, Winn’s grin tells her that he likes it, too.

“That’s it,” he decides, echoing the voice in her head. “That’s the one.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, Lena,” he says. “I think so.”

She buys it without hesitation.

-

Lena wakes up on Christmas excited.

There’s a small stack of presents by the end of her bed, and she opens them each slowly, carefully. She and Kara, along with Barry and Winn, had agreed to do their exchanges together the night before, so there’s only a couple of gifts waiting for her. Something from Maggie and Alex, another gift from just Maggie, something from Eliza, and even a present from the Allens.

The students from the other schools have long since poured into the castle, and despite it being Christmas break, the Great Hall is bubbling and bright with energy when she goes down for breakfast.

She spends the morning with Barry, Winn, and Kara, sprawled out in the courtyard with a stack of board games. Winn had gotten them each a game for Christmas, so they break them all out and play them all until it’s time for lunch.

After lunch, they head their separate ways, back to their own dorms before the ball. The Slytherin common room, normally quiet, buzzes with a sort of energy. Even Leslie seems drawn in by it, and her smiles look a little wider, a little more real.

“I’m doing your make-up, Luthor,” she tells Lena, leaving no room for protest. “And don’t worry, I promise I won’t do anything too dark or heavy. You’ll look nice.”

Lena lets her, in the end, and she has to admit, Leslie does a good job: winged eyeliner, red lips, barely there eye shadow. When she finally lets Lena look in a mirror, the brunette is stunned for a moment, before she smiles.

“As promised,” Leslie teases, her arms folded and her grin smug. “You look good.”

“Thanks, Leslie,” Lena says, and, in a move that surprises them both, pulls the other girl into a hug. It’s a little awkward for them both, but when the blonde pulls back, her lips are still turned up at the corners.

By the time Lena’s actually slipping into her dress, it’s almost time for the ball. She glances in the mirror one last time, at the blue fabric that swishes against her legs, before she leaves the dorm.

Outside the portrait that leads into the Slytherin common room, she finds Winn there, waiting for her. He smiles when he sees her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder.

“You look great, Lena,” he tells her, and she returns the compliment in a heartbeat. Winn’s normally mess locks are combed back, and his robes seem to fit him even better than in the store. He bows, still grinning, and offers her his arm. She takes it, a small laugh bubbling in her chest, and they head down to the Great Hall together.

People have already started to gather outside, breaking off into small groups around the bottom of the staircase. Lena glances around, looking for Barry or Kara, but she doesn’t see any of them.

(Her eyes do catch on Mike Daxam, standing near one of the columns with his arm wrapped around some girl Lena barely recognizes. As if he can feel her looking at him, he turns, meeting her gaze. She expects him to glare, sneer, shoot her any sort of dirty look, but after a moment, he offers her a small sort of smile, and it looks almost apologetic.

She returns it, and he nods at something over her shoulder before turning away.)

“Lena.”

She turns on her heels and there’s Kara. For a minute, she just stares, and later, Barry will tease her for the way her jaw drops, lips parting.

“You look beautiful,” she breathes, and Kara laughs, taking a few steps forward until she’s in Lena’s space.

“So do you,” the blonde says, and just because she can’t help herself, Lena reaches forward to cup Kara’s cheek in her hand as she kisses her, slow. Kara indulges her, for a moment, before pulling back with a hum.

“Lipstick,” she reminds, and Lena gives a soft laugh.

The doors to the Great Hall open after that, and Kara grabs Lena’s hand to pull her inside, Barry and Winn behind them.

The hall is decorated like a wonderland. The floor, while not slippery, looks as if it were covered in ice, and some imitation of snow floats around the ceiling, never falling, just drifting. By the far wall, there are three trees standing, two smaller ones flanking the tallest of the trees in the middle. It’s different than usual warmth they use to decorate on Christmas, but it’s also fascinatingly beautiful. Kara’s eyes go wide as she takes it all in, still holding onto Lena.

“It’s amazing,” the blonde whispers.

“Not as amazing as you,” Lena replies, grinning, and they both laugh as they find an empty table and sit down.

“You too can be so gross,” Barry teases as he and Winn take their own seats.

“We’re adorable,” Kara protests, pouting.

“I agree with Speedster,” Leslie Willis says, appearing and taking the empty spot beside Lena.

“Speedster?”

“You’re the fastest seeker in the school.”

“You do have the highest number of snitch catches out of all the seekers,” Winn points out. “Hufflepuff’s wiping the floor with the other houses between you and Kara.”

“The rest of us are just competing for second place by now,” Leslie adds with a smile.

“Where’s your date, Leslie?” Lena asks.

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Get rid of you? Please, I’ve tried before, we saw how that worked out.”

Leslie snorts. “I don’t have a date. The only person I ever look this hot for is myself.”

Lena and Barry both crack up at that. Winn glances down at himself, the empty seat beside him, and after a moment, nods in something like understanding, grimacing.

“Aw, don’t be so glum, kiddo,” Leslie teases him from across the table. “That blonde girl from two tables over has been looking at you ever since we sat down.”

He glances to his side to see, as Leslie had said, a girl in a dark dress looking at him. She doesn’t look away when the lock eyes, only smiles, and Winn’s face starts to turn pink as he turns back to the table.

“Guys, what do I do?” He asks. “Do I ask her to dance?”

“Um, I don’t know if you have to worry about that,” Barry says, holding back a grin, and nods his head over to the blonde, who is now approaching their table. There’s a mischevious sort of glint in her eyes as she makes her way and rests her palms on the table, leaning forward until there’s only a foot of space between her and Winn.

“I think you should ask me to dance,” she suggests.

“I, um… do you want to dance?” Winn stammers. Instead of saying yes, she grabs his hands and pulls him to his feet, tugging him towards the middle of the floor. Everyone watches them go in various states of disbelief.

“Well, I guess that’s the end of me and Winn going stag together,” Barry mutters.

“Chin up, Speedster, I’ll dance with you,” Leslie proposes. He looks up at her, skeptical, and she rolls her eyes before rounding the table and offers him her hand. After a moment, he takes it, and they follow after Winn and the girl who’d abducted him seconds ago, leaving Lena and Kara alone

“Well, I guess it’s just us, then, Ms. Danvers.”

“Well, Ms. Luthor,” Kara drawls, standing up and reaching out to lace both of their fingers together. “Shall we dance?”

“If you insist,” Lena replies, allowing the blonde to lead her away from the table and over to the dance floor.

The music is slow and gentle as Kara pulls them together, one hand locked with Lena’s and the other on the brunette’s waist. Around them, the dining hall glitters, and she feels, in that moment, incredibly serene. Kara holds her like she’s something precious, like she doesn’t want to ever let go, and Lena’d be inclined to agree.

“I love you,” she whispers, and Kara’s grin splits her face.

“I love you, too.”

(The night feels perfect.)

-

(Kara cares a lot less about either of their lipstick once they’ve left, judging by the way red smudging her mouth, or the pink lip-shaped prints that she leaves on Lena’s neck.

Leslie joins them the next morning at breakfast, and she’s quick to tease them both about how long Lena spent in the bathroom that morning, grinning as she tried to wipe away the remains of the night before.)

-

Lena isn’t used to getting mail at school anymore. Not since last Christmas, when she and Lillian had gotten into it, and communication between them had ceased directly after.

So when an owl drops an envelope into her lap one morning, her name written across in elegant lettering, she’s a little confused. Her mother’s name is nowhere on it, but part of her is still afraid this is somehow a part of some ploy Lillian’s devised. Still, she has to open it, and when she does, the paper nearly falls from her hands in surprise.

Kara, catching the look that passes over her face, leans in to ask her what’s wrong. Wordlessly, Lena turns the parchment so her girlfriend can read it. The blonde pushes her glasses back up her nose and squints as her eyes scan the page. When she reaches the end, she pulls back, taking a moment to register what she’s just read.

“Lena, this means…” she trails off.

“I know.”

“You aren’t…”

“I’m not.”

The letter is from Gringotts, detailing the trust that held her inheritance and the rules that bind it. Untouchable, unheard of, until Lena was to turn eighteen. A separate pool of money her mother could never hope to access without Lena’s cooperation, set aside by her father shortly before his passing. It had been reviewed by lawyers, surrounded with leagues of legal jargon and other protections. And the numerical amount at the bottom, showing exactly how much was in the trust, turned Lena from a broke teenager to an obscenely well-off adult with the passing of her eighteenth birthday.

And the more she reads, the more sure she is that her father set this up the way he did so Lillian could never touch it. The woman’s words echo in her head as she reads the paper over a second time.

(‘And when your mother died,’ she’d said. ‘He brought you home on a whim. Not because he loved you, no, but because of the guilt.’)

She looks back up at Kara, tears welling up in her eyes and threatening to spill over. “I… this means she lied to me,” she whispers.

“About what?” Kara prompts.

“I think, maybe,” Lena replies, and a couple of droplets make their way down her cheeks. “I think this proves that my father did love me, after all.”

-

(“What did you mean, earlier? About your father?”

They’re sitting by the lake, with Lena sat between Kara’s knees, her back pressed to the blonde’s front, arms wrapped around her stomach.

And so Lena tells her, about the night her mother confronted her. About the hand across her cheek, about Mike telling his mother of their relationship. And she repeats, word for word, everything Lillian had hurled at her that night, because she remembers everything that was said then like it’s branded across the backs of her eyelids.

And by the end, Kara’s hold on her has tightened significantly and there are wet tracks down both of their faces, but Lena’s shoulders feel that much lighter.)

-

Lena cries a little when she leaves Hogwarts.

It’s a weird feeling, walking away from the place she’s spent the last seven years of her life. She has so many memories inside the castle walls, and to think that she may never set foot inside again is a bit jarring. It stings, a little, like she’s losing something.

Still, Kara holds her hand, grins at her even though her own eyes are wet.

(“So Lena, I was thinking.

“Yeah? About what?”

“Us. Our plans. What we’ll do after we graduate. Where we’ll go.”)

Barry and Winn are both plenty emotional, tear tracks marking their cheeks. For a moment, Lena looks at them and she remembers the train ride at the end of their first year, Winn squished beside her and Barry sitting on the floor at Alex’s feet. Their carriage had been so full then, and now, there’s just the four of them together, the last to graduate.

A part of Lena feels like, when they leave, there’s a part of them, an echo, that gets left behind.

She feels a little like a slate, like someone’s wiping a piece of her clean, opening space for her to fill with new things, new memories.

(“And, don’t get me wrong, you’ll always have a home with me and Alex and Eliza, but…”

“But?”

“We can’t live there forever. I don’t want to live there forever.”)

Lena cries in earnest when she gets off the train, but Kara kisses the salt from her cheeks, and both Maggie and Alex are already there, waiting for her with open arms.

She thinks of Lillian and Lex when they hug her, the family she was born into, and then she thinks of Barry and Winn, of Kara and Maggie, of Alex and Eliza and Lucy and James and even Cat, of the family who chose her. She thinks about home and warmth and just how lucky she ended up.

And, mostly importantly, what’s still out there for her. How much luckier she’s going to get.

(“I know you’ve got the trust your dad left you, and I’m set to inherit my half of my grandfather’s fortune, so neither of us is all that hard-pressed for money when it comes down to it.”

“That’s true.”

“So I was thinking… how do you feel about getting an apartment? Together?”)

Lena thinks of queen size beds and sunlight coming in through the windows to fall over Kara’s hair in the morning. She thinks of ball gowns, how Kara looked in yellow, and wonders what she’d look like in white.

(The future, her life after Hogwarts, has always seemed so far away, but now it’s here, waiting just in front of her.

And, she thinks, she’s pretty damn ready for it.)