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Dorothea’s brows knot in frustration. She’s been trying to perfect this spell for hours . Her final paper, Advanced Dark Magic and its Applications in Scientific Procedures with Professor Manuela, is in a week, and she’s at wit’s end trying to get out of her predicament.
A small explosion in her hands sends her stumbling back a few steps, but she plants her feet down so she doesn’t fall. Everyone in the common room pays attention to her sudden movement, now, and she grins sheepishly at them. “Sorry about that, guys.”
Dorothea huffs, and goes over to Petra’s side to take her textbook in her lap. She reads the text, almost memorising it word for word now that she’s read it at least a few million times.
(She’s usually very good at reason magic. It is, after all, her best subject. It’s almost a pattern now, though: towards the end of exam season she gets more and more demotivated, her mind getting preoccupied with thoughts of the semester break and what she’s going to do instead of the papers she has to sit looming in the back of her mind.)
Petra is breezing through her revision: she’s on top of her studies, as usual. Her final paper on Advanced Biomechanics of Flight in Wyverns and Pegasi is in five days; her textbooks, notebooks and post-it notes are strewn about haphazardly on the huge table all of them are sharing in the common room.
Petra smiles at her, encouraging. She puts a comforting hand on Dorothea’s knee, and squeezes. “It is going to be okay,” Petra says, “I believe in you!”
Dorothea watches the hand on her knee, Petra’s words lost to the ether. “Um,” is all she says.
(Yeah, that’s a whole other thing. It’s been months — torturous months — since she’d first realised she was interested in Petra the romantic way, but alas, her best friend doesn’t feel the same way.)
But Petra’s warmth is much too infectious to not affect her: she can feel her heart melting, her mind slowing down, and she’s much calmer now, and a smile creeps into her features. “Aw, thanks, Petra,” Dorothea puts a hand over Petra’s on her knee. They stay like that for a few moments until Dorothea is brought back to reality by Edelgard fake-coughing across from her.
“Well, um.”
Dorothea flicks her wrist once to charge, concentrating her energy towards the tips of her fingers and feeling her nerves tingling. She mumbles a stabilising incantation, and there’s a small explosion of light as she flicks her wrist again to cast it.
There’s a small poof, and — nothing happens.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” she says, a hint of annoyance sneaking into her tone. When Professor Manuela demonstrated this very spell during their final lecture she was sure it had been a spectacle. (And by that she means Professor Hanneman tells Professor Manuela to tone down her… everything from the lecture hall next to theirs.)
Petra stands up, then, bringing along a notebook with her. She puts a hand on Dorothea’s shoulder, smiling. “Dorothea, I love you, but I must be going to the library now — there are... fewer distractions there.”
“Alright, take care,” Dorothea says, mirroring her smile. She watches as Petra walks away.
(Curiously, Edelgard says nothing.)
The common room is eerily silent, now. They’re all concentrating on their books, except for Linhardt, peering curiously at Dorothea, squinting, and he looks much like a cat. He tilts his head to the side. His intense, inquisitive gaze unnerves her somewhat.
“Oh,” Linhardt says, a look of discernment gracing his features. “Hm. Dorothea? Did you cast a love spell on me?” (He asks this like it’s a normal thing to ask, like he’s asking her about her day.)
“Uh. I don’t think so?” Surely Dorothea would know, right?
“It’s just,” Linhardt looks away, and Dorothea can see that his neck is now red. (Embarrassment, maybe?) “I think I’m in love with you, which I wasn’t five minutes ago. I shall avoid you now, lest I do something I will regret, like saying something sappy. Good day, Dorothea.”
Dorothea, dumbfounded, only watches as Linhardt gathers his things to go. She hurriedly opens her textbook and looks for the chapter on Agnea’s Arrow.
Take extra caution when casting the spell - a wrong syllable here and an extra flick in the wrist there may result in casting Cupid’s Arrow or Cupid’s Fusillade instead. The two latter spells are similar in nature; however, Cupid’s Fusillade is a ranged spell. 22
22 Brandt, Horace. Forgotten Magic from Fodlan Antiquity. 2018.
“... Oh,” is all Dorothea can say.
.
It takes Dorothea about ten minutes to march to the library on a good day. Today, preoccupied as she is, she stumbles into Caspar at the main entrance of the dorm.
“Oh, hey Dorothea! What’s the hurry?” Caspar asks, smile bright and huge, and Dorothea’s heart tugs at the sight. His presence has a knack for lightening up the atmosphere.
“Caspar…” Dorothea starts, the gears in her head turning into motion, “say, you don’t feel weird, do you? Like… in love with me, maybe?”
Caspar clutches his stomach at that, laughing. “Dorothea, you know that’s impossible! I’m gay!” He wipes away a stray tear from his eye.
Dorothea sighs in relief, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Thank goodness, then! It was just Cupid’s Arrow.” She walks away.
“What was that about?”
.
Dorothea spends ten minutes searching for the book in the library database, and with every passing second her frustration is mounting.
Brandt, Horace. 0 results.
Horace Brandt. 0 results.
Brandt. 115 results. (When Dorothea skims through there is no author Horace Brandt.)
Forgotten Magic Fodlan Antiquity. 0 results.
Forgotten Magic Fodlan. 0 results.
Forgotten Magic. 2 results.
Forgotten Magic of the Adrestian Empire. 1999. Emma Schafer.
Forgotten Magic of the World Before. 1873. Mehitabel Wainwright.
Dorothea boggles at the two books. Nineteenth-century books are still available in the library? Free to check out?
Well.
They aren’t a perfect match, but at this point she’ll take what she can get. Dorothea clicks on the first book. Copies: 2. Availability: 0. All copies checked out.
And the second one…
Copies: 1. Availability: 0. All copies checked out.
Dorothea can only laugh at the incredulity of the situation. What luck! She’s managed to accidentally cast a love spell, a rare, forgotten spell no less, and here she is: hunting down obscure reference books and none of them are available.
Dorothea leans back on her chair, contemplating her next steps. She thinks of someone that can help.
.
“Come in,” Manuela says when she hears a knock on the door. It opens just so slightly, and she straightens her posture as she watches her student approaching her desk. “Dorothea. How can I help you?”
“— and that, folks, is how you bury a body without leaving any trace—”
Manuela hurriedly closes her laptop. Dorothea turns back around, heading towards the door as quickly as her legs can take her.
“I’ll come back another time!” Dorothea yells, hoping her laughter will cover up her nervousness.
“No— Dorothea, that was just… a silly pastime. You were going to ask?”
“No, Professor Manuela, I get it,” Dorothea winks, hoping it comes across as a joke. “It seems silly now, but I, uh, was gonna ask you about some love spells.”
“Well,” Manuela’s brows shoot up to her hairline. Her curiosity’s piqued now. She straightens again to hopefully regain any semblance of authority she had earlier. “I’m happy you want to explore outside the syllabus, but there’s a reason they’re forgotten, you know.”
“It’s just that— I was practising Agnea’s Arrow but I accidentally cast a love spell on Linhardt instead.”
Manuela taps a finger to her chin, racking her brain for anything in the area of magic involving feelings. Her eyes light up when she thinks of something, and she says, “Yes, yeah, the textbook mentions Cupid’s Arrow, doesn’t it?”
“Yes?”
“Cupid spells are the easiest to cast, are mostly harmless, and the effects should wear off in a week,” Manuela lists off. “But tell Linhardt if the feelings persist to come see me at once.”
“O— okay, Professor, thank you so much.”
Dorothea runs out of the office.
.
Dorothea runs into Bernadetta, who avoids her gaze when Dorothea greets her. Bernadetta says a quick, “Talk to you later, Dorothea!” before she shuts the door in her face.
“... oh.”
.
Dorothea heads to the library, again, to look for Petra. There she is, in her own little corner that she likes, near the shelf lined with the books on language studies.
Petra, as always, senses her presence and looks up from her seat in the bean bag. There’s a smile on her face, bright and sunny, and Dorothea feels her insides tingling, her heart swelling twice its size. She feels warm, despite the cool weather.
“Hello, Dorothea,” Petra says, patting the space next to her. The bean bag easily accommodates two people, but Petra shifts so that their sides are touching, and oh, Dorothea’s skin is on fire wherever they brush.
They sit there, in silence. Petra is reading a book she’s holding in one hand while her other traces idle patterns on Dorothea’s knee.
Dorothea wonders: how did this easy intimacy between them come along? Petra is such a tactile friend, so generous with her warm touches, Dorothea is curious how Petra would act around her girlfriend. A shudder runs down her spine. She should absolutely not be thinking about her friend like this.
(She is helpless to stop the blush forming across her features. She finds, in these moments, she doesn’t want to stop. She’s figured out a long time ago the first step to moving on is to embrace her feelings: denial only makes it worse.)
“Petra,” she starts, putting her hand over Petra’s on her knee. “Can I… ask you something?”
“Of course,” Petra says, not looking away from her book.
“Do you… feel anything different about me?”
Petra looks at her, then. Her brown eyes are inquisitive, and every fibre of Dorothea’s body threatens to burn under her gaze.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, earlier… I had a casting accident. It was a love spell. Linhardt’s in love with me, and Caspar isn’t, but he’s gay so it doesn’t count. Bernie is acting weird, but she could be having one of her off days, so.” Dorothea’s words come out in a rush.
Petra looks off to the side, considering. After a few beats, she says, “I do not feel any differently about you.”
“Oh.” Dorothea relaxes her shoulders, lets out a breath she doesn’t realise she was holding. (She’s allowed to be disappointed, isn’t she? She isn’t looking to make Petra fall in love with her using magic because gross , she isn’t a creepy predator, but. Being hit with the realisation that her feelings aren’t returned stings a bit. Okay , a lot, if she’s being honest.) “Alright.”
She watches as worry floods Petra’s eyes, and asks her if she’s okay, and the warmth of Petra’s touch on her shoulder feels sort of overwhelming, then.
When Petra smiles, Dorothea decides that having Petra in her life, in whatever capacity Petra offers, is more than enough for her.
.
Over the next week, Dorothea tries to talk to everyone in between their respective study sessions. She runs into Hubert, Ferdinand, and Edelgard that night in the common room. (Bernadetta, it seems, is still locked in her room.)
It looks as if Ferdinand has made them their choice beverages to get them ready for another all-nighter. There are prominent dark circles under Edelgard’s eyes. Dorothea winces at the sight. The poor girl’s been straining herself because her two final papers are going to be within hours of each other, and the exams make up more than half her grade.
“So, you guys, sorry to be the bringer of bad news,” Dorothea starts, seating herself across from Edelgard. “But I accidentally cast a love spell earlier and I’m not sure if it’s ranged, but, yeah. I thought I should tell you.”
“I can confirm for you now that it is a ranged one, Dorothea,” Ferdinand says with a smile, looking sideways at Hubert.
“I was wondering why my chest hurt looking at you today,” Hubert scowls, drinking his coffee in one go. “It seems I have my answer.”
Dorothea turns to Ferdinand, impressed. “Ferdie, you can read him, just like that?” She widens her eyes, then. And you’re not jealous?
“I must admit, we know each other like the backs of our hands,” Ferdinand says, bringing his cup of tea to his lips. He stops, considering. A blush rises from his neck to the tips of his ears as a thought registers in his mind. Oh. Oh.
There’s a panicked across Ferdinand’s features, then. “But the way Hubert looks at Dorothea now is the way he usually looks at me,” he whispers to himself.
Dorothea grins, smug. Edelgard’s still waiting for her bergamot tea to cool down; there are vapours swirling above her cup. She’s too tired to say anything, just leans back to watch her friends. Ferdinand and Hubert, smart as they are, can be fools from time to time. They’re silent, now — at a loss at what to say.
“And you, Edie? I hope I haven’t done much damage?” Edelgard is startled out of her thoughts by Dorothea’s gentle voice.
“Well,” she starts. For a few moments, she gathers her thoughts. “I am in love with you, but the feelings aren't as intense as my love towards my girlfriend, so there’s no harm done.”
“That’s a relief!” Dorothea says with a small chuckle. “It’s gonna be awkward to explain that though…”
“I still do love you, as a friend,” Edelgard tacks on, placing a comforting hand on Dorothea’s.
The two boys are disturbingly quiet, Dorothea notices. They’re sitting next to each other, but their arms aren’t touching like they usually do. Realising you’re in love with not one but two of your best friends is a troubling affair, Dorothea supposes. (Well, she should know. She’s been there, after a fashion.)
(Later that night, Hubert knocks on Dorothea’s door before sneaking in to sit on her bed. His mind is cluttered, and she can sense it from the way he knocks, all quick and rash, unlike how he usually is.
“What do I do,” he says, and it comes out less as a question than a statement that he’s helpless and confused.
Dorothea looks at him, smiles warmly. “About me? That’ll go away in a week. But Ferdie? I’m sorry to tell you, Hubie, but that’s been going on for a while now.”
“Hm. I have been wondering if I have an underlying heart condition, with my chest clenching as it is when he’s around,” Hubert jokes wryly, hand on his heart. “I’m glad to finally know the reason.”)
.
Bernadetta finds her in the common room, a few days after, handing her a beautiful piece with embroidered flowers, purple, red, pink.
“Sorry for repeatedly kicking you out of my room,” she says, hands fiddling with her sleeves, “I was making these for you. I saw them in the gardens the other day and they reminded me of you."
“Oh, Bernie,” Dorothea says wistfully. “You don’t have to do this… in a few days your feelings for me are going to disappear.” She hands the piece back to Bernadetta.
Bernadetta looks at her, then, and there’s a resolve in her eyes when she’s determined, and holds Dorothea’s hands and her piece in place. “Well, I… uh. Um. Right now making you happy makes me happy, so I want to give it to you anyway! And I sincerely do love you, Dorothea. As, uh, a friend.”
“Oh.”
“Should I… not have said that? I’m sorry—”
Dorothea jumps to pull her friend into a hug. “No, Bernie, I love you too!”
.
Exams go by smoothly. (The Black Eagles only spend an average of three nights pulling all-nighters, so by their standards it’s been a good exam season. Linhardt significantly brought down that average, but that’s another story.)
She’s made an agreement with Petra to go out after their final papers, but they’re both all kinds of exhausted so they just go to the restaurant a few blocks away that make the best vegetable stir fry outside of the Garreg Mach cafeteria.
“Dorothea, are you ready to leave?” Petra asks from the doorway. She shouldn’t be as beautiful as she is. It just isn’t fair. Petra’s only slept five hours in two days, and yet the way she carries herself, so sure and strong and steady, screams confidence.
“Just a moment,” Dorothea says. The word ‘dear’ is on the tip of her tongue, but she stops herself. She won’t let herself think about the domestic bliss of calling her partner pet names, but, well. Her mind drifts sometimes.
Dorothea looks sideways, and catches a glance at the books on her bedside table. A few days ago while camping out at the library she’d run into Lysithea and found out she was in possession of the books, so she’d asked for them after exams were over.
Dorothea applies more concealer to cover her dark circles (she gives up after a few moments — they’re a lost cause now), takes one of the books and walks over to Petra, who gives her a quizzical look, an eyebrow raised at her.
“Love spell,” is all she says in explanation, and Petra instantly understands.
.
Dorothea reads, in the car, despite her car-sickness, but she pushes through. Her sight is dull from days of continuous reading and at times she feels like the words are flying away from her and she’s scrambling to catch them.
Until, that is, she finds the specific chapter on Cupid’s Fusillade.
Past sources have stated that the range of this spell is a building 15, 16 . More research is needed to investigate how exactly ‘a building’ is discerned. This spell, along with its more mild cousin Cupid’s Arrow, do not affect those whose sexual orientations are not compatible, and those who already have intense romantic feelings for the caster, as they ‘nudge’ the objects into these romantic feelings.
It takes a few moments for the words to click in her brain, slower than usual in processing information tonight, it seems. She turns to Petra, whose eyes are trained on the wide stretch of road in front of her, happily humming along to some pop song on the radio.
Petra?
Petra’s not straight. She’s talked to the Black Eagles, to Dorothea, about her bad first dates with girls , about her first ever crush on a senior when she went to an all-girls’ school, about her ex-girlfriends. She’s talked about one ex-boyfriend, a result of her questioning her sexuality when she was younger. Petra is a lesbian. She likes to make lesbian jokes around her friends.
So… what was the other alternative?
Oh—
Dorothea is snapped out of her thoughts when Petra touches an arm on her headrest, looking back to reverse into the parking spot. She looks charming like that, one hand on the steering wheel. (Dorothea doesn’t want to admit it, but she is swooning.)
Petra’s hand is so close. If Dorothea leans back, she can press a kiss onto it.
“Dorothea? We have arrived.”
Right. The restaurant. They’re celebrating the end of exams.
.
“Two stir-fried vegetables, rice, and pork dumplings, please,” Petra says, handing the menus back to the waiter.
“Oh, I don’t need rice,” Dorothea protests lightly.
“Dorothea, dearest, you have not eaten a proper meal in days . Please?”
Dorothea is, as always, helpless to say no to Petra. (She almost combusts at the pet name.)
“Alright,” Dorothea turns to the waiter. “Two bowls of rice.”
The bright grin that Petra shoots at her is more than worth it.
“Is everything alright?” Petra asks, gesturing at her general presence. “You are seeming to be… on edge since the drive.”
“I—” Dorothea hesitates, then sighs, defeated. Better to get this out of the way. Uncertainty will only bring her endless misery, what with her tendency to overthink straight to hell. “So, Cupid’s Fusillade.”
“The spell you accidentally cast all over the dorm, yes?”
“Yes. The book says it doesn’t affect anyone whose romantic feelings already exist.” Dorothea gathers the courage to look straight at Petra now, whose eyes are wide and seems to be looking for the right words to say.
“I— I do not have understanding.” Petra glances away, out the window and at her car.
Dorothea reaches for Petra’s hand on the table, hopes her touch is comforting more than anything else. She tries for a warm smile, and by the way Petra’s eyes soften, she thinks it’s working.
“Petra, come on. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Petra sighs. (Defeat? Throwing the last of her hesitation to the wind?)
“I did not want to be losing you as a best friend. You are important to me, Dorothea. I do not want to imagine a life without you.”
Oh. Oh?
Petra? Princess of Brigid? Her crush? Likes her back? Her thoughts race in one million different directions, each crashing into another, her brain halting almost all function to cope.
Dorothea takes Petra’s hand and holds it against her heart. Petra can feel it now — the unsteady rhythm beating under her skin, singing a song she wants to study, speaking a language she wants to be fluent in.
“You wouldn’t lose me, ever. You understand that?” She is met with silence, so she continues. “The truth is… I was kind of disappointed when you said you didn’t feel any different after the spell. It was an accident, of course, I would never play with anyone’s feelings like that, but… I don’t know…”
Petra pipes in then, her voice small, her face as red as the Adrestian sunset. “Dorothea, I can not be taking you seriously with my hand on your breast.”
“Oh!” Dorothea lets go, and then in an attempt to lighten the mood, she says, “Plenty more where that came from!” She tries to wink.
They hold each other’s gazes, then, Dorothea looking for something, anything, behind Petra’s eyes. They burst out in a fit of laughter.
“Look how ridiculous we are,” Petra says, wiping a stray tear from her eye.
“This is just how I am with romance,” Dorothea says, mirth in her voice.
“That is very nice,” Petra says, her smile soft now. She takes Dorothea’s hand, again, and plays with her fingers. “I am usually good with touches, I do not know what is different now.”
“Well, we’ve got time to figure it out.”
“I would like to take you out to dinner, on an official date, if you want to.”
“Oh? This isn’t a date?” Dorothea asks playfully.
“Our usual stir-fry after examinations is hardly a date,” Petra says, resolute. She’s still playing with Dorothea’s hand, and it’s an amazing contrast with how soft she is with her touches. “I would like to take you to this fancy Brigidian place across town. They make the best kelp and lamb soup.”
“I’d like that, very much.”
.
They walk into the dorm hand-in-hand, giggling all the way, and stop in front of Dorothea’s door.
“That was nice,” Dorothea says, letting out a yawn. They’re standing toe-to-toe, not wanting to say goodbye so early in the night. Petra looks at her, and her eyelashes flutter so beautifully every time she blinks. They say nothing for a moment, until they hear Edelgard’s door creak open.
“I am trying . To sleep. You two have sleepovers all the time, I am begging you Petra just go inside.” Edelgard straight away disappears into her room.
“As much as I’d like that, I would like some time to sort through my thoughts,” Dorothea says, a sheepish smile on her features.
“You will not be overthinking, will you?”
“No, I just— I’m a little overwhelmed, I guess. I’ve liked you for months and I just found out you liked me back.”
“I will see you in the morning, then, dearest.”
Dorothea’s breath hitches, as it always does when Petra calls her by a pet name. “Petra, can I—”
Petra stands on the tips of her toes and kisses Dorothea’s cheek. She turns, then, and now they’re kissing on the lips, and— oh, Petra’s lips are soft and they taste like her cherry-flavoured chapstick.
Dorothea chases her, when she parts away a little, and presses another small kiss on her lips. “I should go,” she says, while not making any moves to do so.
“I should go, too,” Petra says, breathless.
There’s another creak from Edelgard’s door.
“I am going to throttle you two.”