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Chapter Text

When Nicole is seven she gets a cop kit. Her mother sighs heavily, casting faintly accusing, strongly recriminatory looks at her father, who shrugs. It’s one of the cheap ones, with the weak metal handcuffs even a child can break out of using brute strength, but she pins the plastic gold badge to her pajama top and arrests her sister for sneaking a cookie before dinner.

On her ninth birthday she buys a cap gun with the allowance she’s saved up for years and all the spare change she can find: the sidewalk, the couch cushions, the gutters. She prowls the neighborhood, taking cover behind the trees and the patio furniture, leaping out to shoot the imaginary criminals. She’s in her front yard when Johnny Wilson from next door jumps out, startling her into a scream. He laughs and pulls her ponytail, hard enough to make her yelp, tears springing in her eyes. She brings the gun up and fires at him, even know she knows it’ll only make a sharp popping noise and smell like burnt out firecrackers. They’re both surprised when it fires a pellet into his leg. He topples over, then wails, stumbling away and calling for his parents. His mother storms their house ten minutes later.

“It was a cap gun,” Nicole protests when her parents sit her down for a lecture, but she’s grounded for a week and her father throws her gun away. She cries for two days, heartbroken, and on the third day her mother tells her to try smiling at Johnny at school, that he was trying to play with her and pulled her hair because he liked her. She clenches her hands into tiny fists, stops crying and starts being angry.

She’s grounded on her tenth birthday because she gets in a fight with two boys on the playground. One of them now has green hair, which the administration hasn’t figured out how to blame her for. “They were being mean,” she mutters in the principal's office, pinned by disapproving glares.

“That was not ladylike,” her mother scolds while her father drives them home. Nicole thinks about Lisa Jaffy, who cried when the boys pushed her down in the mud and laughed.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, and accepts going straight to bed without dinner, clomping into her room. She lies on her back in bed and rubs her scraped knuckles. She thinks about how Lisa had smiled when she’d thrown a punch and how soft her hand felt in Nicole’s when she pulled her to her feet, how blue her eyes were. She rolls over to hide her flushed face in her pillow and giggles.

On her eleventh birthday an owl swoops her Aunt Meredith, who’s telling her boys don’t like girls who talk too much, and drops a letter in her lap.

//

Nicole’s mother holds her hand too tight in Diagon Alley, breathing too fast as they wander through the orientation, the bank, the shops. Nicole gets a wand, robes, equipment she’s never heard of, a cat because her mother frets she’ll be too homesick. Then they go to the bookstore and Nicole leaves her mother ticking down the school list to edge up to the counter, wait until the man with the wild white hair notices her. She clears her throat, nervous because she knows the church dress her mother made her wear makes her stick out. “Excuse me? Are there wizard cops?”

The man peers down at her. “Cops?”

“Police,” Nicole clarifies, and he squints at her for a few long seconds.

“Here.” He’s holding a book, green and red and yellow, with silvery lettering. When she reaches for it snaps at her and she jumps back. Then she takes a deep breath and pinches it between two palms.

“Stop that,” she tells it firmly, and it goes docile in her hands.

The man’s face softens. “No extra charge.” Nicole walks back to her mother, tracing the title with the edges of her nails.

“Auror,” she says, testing the word on her tongue. She likes it.

//

Nicole sits on the train with her cat purring in her carrier against her legs, listening to the wheels rattle along on the tracks, alone in her own compartment. The door slams open and another girl stumbles in, older.

“Shit,” she says. She shoves the door shut behind her. “Yeah, listen, can I chill here for a minute?” She fumbles with the door. “Why don’t these lock?” Footsteps thunder past, raised voices. The girl winces. “Maybe two minutes?”

Nicole eyeballs her. “Who’re you?”

“Wynonna Earp.” The girl sticks a hand out, and before Nicole can decide what to do the door bursts open again.

“Here she is,” another girl hisses, “you bitch!”

“Do you mind?” Wynonna asks, turning, “my friend and I are having a private conversation.”

The girl rakes her eyes over to Nicole, her nose turned up. Nicole doesn’t really have a dog in this fight, and she had promised her parents to stop fighting, but Wynonna’d offered to shake her hand and this girl is curling her lip in a sneer, so Nicole stands up. “Yeah, do you mind?”

The girl snorts, dismissive. She turns to Wynonna. “Hiding behind Mudbloods now?” Nicole’s never heard that word in her life but she’s eleven, not a moron, and she springs to her feet, drawing her wand from where she keeps it up her sleeve. Wynonna beats her to action, slamming the girl against the wall with her hands twisted in the collar of her robes, her face white with fury.

“Ms. Earp.” An adult has appeared, his voice calm but iron. “Ms. Tirten. Perhaps it’s best you two remain several cars apart.” He separates them, sends the girl on her way. “Watch yourself,” he warns Wynonna, “do you really want to be set back another year?” Wynonna shuts the door in his face. She looks at Nicole.

“You a second year or a third?”

“First.” Wynonna looks surprised.

“Really? You’re tall for a firstie.”

“I know.”

Wynonna looks at Nicole’s wand, still outstretched. “If you’re a first year, what were you planning to do with that?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole admits. She slips it back up her sleeve.

“Right. Well, nice to meet you, uh…”

“Nicole. You don’t have to go.”

“You seem nice.” Wynonna knocks the door open with a shove of her hand. “But you really don’t want to be friends with me.” She points down the aisle. “She’s a bitch, but I may have deserved the beating she was looking to give.”

“May have?”

“I may have--” Wynonna wiggles her eyebrows “--made out with her boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Nicole says.

“And her brother.” Wynonna steps out of the compartment. “See you around, Nancy.” She leaves.

“Nicole,” Nicole says, to no one.

//

Nicole is still in awe of the lake, the squid, the floating candles, the galaxy moving on the ceiling, when they call her name and thump the (talking. singing.) hat over her face.

“Not scared?” it asks her. “You’re taking this pretty in stride for a Muggle born.”

“I’m not scared,” Nicole whispers, fierce. She slides a hand up her robe sleeve to feel her wand, reassuring and warm in her palm.

“Hm.” When the hat screams RAVENCLAW Nicole pushes it off her face and staggers to the table that’s roaring a welcome, nibbles on bread to calm her stomach.

//

Nicole joins the dueling club. She carves out an hour every day, including weekends, to practice: quickdrawing, the little shields and wards and jinxes she learns during clubtime. She finds she’s good at charms, but terribly weak at Transfigurations, and she thinks Potions is a cruel and unnecessary punishment. She’s surprised to see Wynonna in a few of her blocks; Wynonna’s two years older than her but counted only as a second year, and apparently is in a few first year classes.

During Transfigurations Nicole’s partner accidentally transfigures the needle into a really big needle instead of a thimble and the failure seems to anger it; it stabs Nicole through the palm before the Professor waves it back into an inanimate object. Nicole trots down to the infirmary, handkerchief wrapped around her wound, and Wynonna is already there, talking to her wand.

“I know you don’t like me,” she’s whispering, “but we’re stuck with each other, so if you could calm down the burning and the not working I’d take it as a personal favor.”

“Hi,” Nicole says from the doorway. Wynonna jerks, her wand disappearing up her sleeve. Her left hand is blistered, shining with ointment and inflamed, swollen. Nicole holds up her own hand. “Transfiguration.”

“Angry needle?”

Nicole nods and Wynonna shifts over on the bed so Nicole can hop up next to her. Their legs swing off the ground, brushing occasionally. Madame Pomfrey bustles over, clicking her tongue, and slaps something greasy and foul smelling over the puncture in her palm.

“Wait ten minutes.” She turns to Wynonna. “And ar you still insisting on using someone else’s wand?” Wynonna’s face freezes, hardens.

“It’s mine.” Madame Pomfrey tuts and leaves, her attention drawn to a sheepish Hufflepuff staggering in with backwards knees. Wynonna’s face is completely closed off, her breathing harsh and furious, and Nicole wants to break the silence but can’t think of anything. After ten minutes the burning itch in her hand fades, the skin healed over pink and new. When she leaves she casts a last look back, sees Wynonna looking down her sleeve.

“Please,” she whispers.

//

Nicole goes home at Christmas and practices wand movements with a stick from the lemon tree in the backyard, pours over her books. She eats dinner with her parents and they ask generic questions: has she made friends? Does she like the food? They don’t talk about magic and they change the subject when Nicole tries to tell them about how the squid likes boiled peanuts, how she saw a wood sprite twirling under the moonlight. Her sister is busy with her friends and Nicole is bored. Her father drags her into the living room and teaches her how to fight dirty, gouging eyeballs and sucker punches, how to use her body to beat bigger and stronger opponents.

“I don’t know what world you live in now,” he says, a little sad, a little angry. “But you’ll never be free of it. You have to be smarter, better, than… those people.” There’s a pause before he says people, and he says it like the girl had said Mudblood on the train.

//

They move Nicole up to second year Defense Against the Dark Arts for the second term, even though she’s still a first year, and she decides to spend two hours a day practicing rather than just one, thinking about her own dreams and her father’s warning. Her suitemates get tired of her throwing jinxes at the wooden target in their shared room and she moves her practice to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where it’s quiet and isolated but not yet dangerous or off limits. She’s taking a water break when she hears branches cracking. She tenses, drawing her wand and dropping her bottle, but it’s only Wynonna, staggering out.

“Hey,” she says when she sees Nicole.

“Hey,” Nicole answers. She frowns. “You’re not supposed to be in there.”

“What’re you gonna do, rat me out?”

“No.”

Wynonna looks surprised. “Really?” Nicole sighs.

“Does everyone actually hate you, or are you just delusional?”

“Both, if you ask the professionals.” Wynonna flops to sit against a tree trunk, picking up Nicole’s fallen water bottle and chugging. “What’s your excuse for being out here?”

Nicole lifts her chin. “I’m going to be an Auror.”

Wynonna laughs. “Sure, kid.”

Nicole grits her teeth, blood rushing in her ears. “You’re drunk,” she accuses. She knows the look.

“Yeah,” Wynonna says, like it should be obvious. “And you’re a muggle goody two shoe newbie witch who couldn’t transfigure her way out of a paper bag.” Her eyes narrow. “What are you really doing out here? Did someone send you to spy on me?”

“You were right,” Nicole fumes, grabbing her bag off the ground. “I don’t want to be your friend.”

//

There’s some kind of tradition Ravenclaw has two weeks before finals where they all camp out in the library. “Why can’t other Houses come,” Nicole wonders, brow furrowed, and is told to have a little house pride. She thinks it’ll cut into her practice time, and her roommates are still a little tetchy about the time she underestimated the range of a gravity flip hex, so she bows out of the bonding study experience, reveling in having the room to herself.

She’s asleep when she hears the floorboards creak, and she’s awake and flinging Petrificus Totalus in the same second. There’s a heavy thump as someone hits the ground.

“What the fuck,” Wynonna says, muffled, facedown. Nicole flips her over with a grunt and peers at her.

“What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing, dueling like that as a firstie?” Nicole feels a rush of pride.

“Not bad for a muggle goody two shoe newbie witch?” It takes her two tries to undo the curse, and Wynonna groans when she’s free, rubbing her arms.

“I guess,” she mutters, which is not an apology.

“How’d you get in here? Aren’t there charms and stuff?”

Wynonna snorts. “Please. I may be the biggest fuck up to ever hit the incestous Pureblood family web, but I know how to sneak around.” Nicole stares at her, and she relents. “I could… use a place to crash. I thought you’d all be at the nerd gathering in the library.”

Nicole climbs back into bed. She flaps a hand at the rest of the room. “Those are free, I guess.” She points at one of the beds. “Shravya’s the cleanest.”

Wynonna stands up and hesitates. “You’re not going to call for a prefect? Or kick me out yourself?”

Nicole smashes her face into her pillow. “No.” There’s a short period of silence.

“Are you hungry?”

Nicole opens her eyes with a sigh. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“So? I could murder a stack of pancakes.” Nicole drums her finger against her mattress.

“Yeah, okay.” She dresses while Wynonna pokes through the trunks of her roommates, then leads her through the castle, winding to avoid the patrol routes she somehow knows about. She also seems to know all the paintings, even they look at her disapprovingly, and in short order she’s poking at a portrait to swing it open. Nicole steps into the kitchen, where Wynonna greets the house elves by name and soon they’re eating perfectly golden pancakes smothered with butter and maple syrup, thick fluffy french toast with cut fruit and powdered sugar. They walk back to the dorms yawning and leaning on each other.

Wynonna stays the week, spitting sunflower seeds on her roommates’ beds. She’s asleep when Nicole leaves and lounging when she returns. “Do you even go to class?”

“For exams. Sometimes.”

Nicole sinks into studying, stressed, and Wynonna tugs her away from her books every so often for food a house elf actually delivers, and what’s she’s dubbed ‘cute firstie Auror practice’. “You’re actually pretty not terrible,” she says. Nicole learns Wynonna isn’t bad herself, brash and instinctive but with a wicked arsenal of curses and creative, ingenious use of the environment. They spar between dinner and Nicole’s daily miserable grind through her Transfiguration textbook, and Nicole has to scramble so Wynonna doesn’t wipe the floor with her. After one particularly grueling match that shatters glass and has the paintings fleeing the room they flop on their backs on Nicole’s bed, panting. Wynonna shoves tissue up her nose to staunch the bleed she’ll have for the next four hours and Nicole’ll have jelly legs until breakfast but she feels jubilant, exhilarated. It makes her brave.

“Why’re you older but in some first year classes?”

“I was in the hospital,” Wynonna says after a moment, tense and quiet.

“Oh.” Nicole heaves herself up to her elbows, and then sitting. She sighs. “Transfiguration.” Wynonna doesn’t get up, her breathing going even and soft. By the time Nicole snaps her book shut she’s too tired to shake Wynonna awake. She crawls into bed beside her, tugging a blanket over them both, and passes out.

//

When she wakes up Wynonna’s still against her side, snoring lightly, and two of her suitemates are peering down at her.

“Seriously?” Shravya asks. “You’re… with Earp?”

“Don’t be a moron.” Wynonna’s voice is cutting, and she doesn’t bother to open her eyes. “You’re all very sexually minded for twelve year olds.” Shravya’s unimpressed.

“You’re only two years older than us.”

“So I’m friends with your roommate. Get over it.”

“How’d you even get in here?”

“I let her in,” Nicole pipes up. “Like she said. Friends.”

“Listen,” Shravya says, “you’re weirdly focused, and you’re muggle-born, so it’s not your fault for not knowing, but Wynonna Earp is bad news. She’s crazy. You know she killed her dad, right?” Nicole had no idea about any of that, but Wynonna flinches, actually flinches, the girl who hadn’t blinked when hit with four curses in a row, which she let Nicole do to see what they’d act like chained together.

Nicole punches Shravya in the face.

Things deteriorate from there.

//

They’re dragged in front of a panel. Head of Houses, Head Boy and Girl, Headmistress. Wynonna is flippant and irreverent and Nicole tries to be stoic, her stomach rolling, her palms sweating. They try to get Wynonna to admit how she got through the charms and Nicole again, claims to have let her in. They get four weeks scrubbing cauldrons at the beginning of fall term, after summer break. When they leave the headmistress’ office there’s a boy leaning against the stone wall.

“Making trouble, Earp?”

“Oh never, future Prefect Dolls,” Wynonna drawls.

“I’ll figure out how you do it one day,” he says. Wynonna salutes him, mocking.

//

Nicole stumbles out of her last final of the day in a haze and Wynonna is waiting for her. “I figure it might be awkward in your dorm for a few days. Wanna put it off and duel in the forest?”

“Yeah.” They walk out of the castle, feeling the summer breeze on their faces. “Does this mean I’m not a goody two shoe anymore?”

Wynonna slings a companionable arm around her shoulders. “I think that ship has sailed. Next year I’ll teach you how to fly.”

//

Nicole takes up jogging over summer holiday. It centers her, and helps when her fingers itch for her wand. She feels cut off, trapped in her house that doesn’t feel like her home anymore, not allowed to use the magic that hums in her skin. She considers writing Wynonna but realizes she has neither an address nor an owl. Her mother is hesitant around her, both fumbling with the loss of familiarity and the awkwardness left in its place. Her father teaches her how to shoot his old rifle, and she thinks it might be because it doesn't require conversation. Her sister is away at camp, and Nicole plays basketball in the park on the weekends, bored.

//

She looks for Wynonna at the station but can’t find her. She walks the train twice before she discovers her slumped in a solitary compartment. “Hey.” Wynonna looks surprised to see her, and Nicole slides into the seat across from her. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

Wynonna looks as hesitant as Nicole’s ever seen her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d changed your mind.” She rolls a shoulder. “No hard feelings if you want to bounce.”

Nicole shrugs. “I guess I’ll keep you around. Until I can fly better than you.”

“You know I’m on the team, right?” Nicole tries to hide her surprise and can’t. “I know… not big on spirit, me.” She crooks her fingers into angry quotation marks. “It’s supposed to help me with my ‘rage problem’.” Nicole makes a noncommittal noise. Wynonna socks her shoulder. “Hey!”

“Are you going to try to and say you don’t have an anger problem?”

“No,” Wynonna mutters. “But as a friend, you should agree with me. However ridiculous.”

“Fine.” Nicole sighs, put upon, but she can’t hide her smile. Friends.

//

In her fifth year, Nicole meets a Girl. Kylie is short and she’s got half her head shaved, the other half grown long and braided and fierce, and she wears fangs in the upper cartilage of her ears. She swoops Nicole in the early mornings, when she’s trying to practice shooting on the field (Wynonna doesn’t fly in the morning. Wynonna doesn’t do anything in the morning), and smirks when Gryffindor wins the first scrimmage of the season, doing a fancy spin during the post game handshakes. “Better luck next time,” she sing songs, and Nicole flushes, part rage part something else.

“I’ll get you next time,” she says at the after party, and Kylie laughs, kissing her against the damp grass, the music and laughter fading away with the skim of her fingers up Nicole’s top.

Nicole goes dreamy at mealtimes, sneaking glances at the Gryffindor table, and Wynonna gets a weird, pinched look on her face when Nicole talks about her. “Just be careful,” Wynonna mutters.

“She’s a Gryffindor,” Nicole teases, “don’t you have support for your own House?”

“Yeah,” Wynonna says, “not really even a little bit.”

Nicole takes her to the Astronomy tower the night before the big game, where they’ll have to try and beat each other into the ground. She winds around the castle using the route Wynonna taught her and likes the impressed look Kylie gets when they dodge the patrols easily. The stars are bright and the wind is cold enough Nicole tugs Kylie against her to share one cloak, smiling when she bites at Nicole’s neck. They drink the fizzy liquor from Wynonna’s borrowed flask and make out, messy and too wet, sloppy and giggling.

“C’mere,” Kylie says, smirking eyes, and Nicole loses her virginity in the moonlight, gasping and shuddering, Kylie panting and murmuring into her chest.

She wakes up hungover, alone, and late to the game, sprinting through the castle, flinging accios as she tears down to the field, dressing on the way. She makes it thirty seconds before the starting whistle and her Captain delays the game by lighting into her, furious, and Nicole brings her hands up too slow, blinking at her reflexes until Madame Hooch pulls them apart and shoves Nicole on her broom. She rises to her starting position and Wynonna’s waiting for her, out of formation. “What the hell happened to you?”

Nicole blinks rapidly, the headache thumping in her temples. She didn’t think she’d drunk that much. “Overslept,” she says, her words slow and fumbly. Wynonna opens her mouth, frowning, but the whistle cuts through the air and the snitch flits away and they separate.

Nicole scores two goals before she has to swoop down to the grass and vomit. She groans, dragging herself back to her broom and not at all enjoying the loud commentary booming around the stadium on what she appeared to have for dinner the night before. She rises, shaky, and nods when a fellow chaser hisses to get her shit together. Kylie falls into a flight path right beside her. “You’re tougher than I thought.”

Nicole groans again. “How are you not feeling this?”

“Probably because I didn’t drink any after I slipped the flu shot in.”

Nicole halts so fast she almost catapults herself off her broom. “What?”

Kylie turns and floats back over to her. “It has some fancy name, but we’re both muggle-born, right? Flu shot. Get it, like a shot?” She laughs. “Oh don’t give me that look. You’re cute and it’s not personal.” She shrugs. “I want the cup, babe.” She zips away and Nicole is frozen, long enough that a bludger knocks her off her broom.

//

She wakes up in the infirmary, her ribs twanging. Waverly is sitting beside her. “Hey,” she says, “you’re awake!”

“Ugh,” Nicole says. “What happened?”

“You fell,” Waverly says, and her face is tight for a second. “You looked… really sick.”

Nicole remembers with a rush. She covers her face with one hand. “I’m so stupid.” Waverly pats her other hand, gentle.

“Wynonna found out what happened. The school’s trying to decide if there should be any action taken.”

Nicole snorts. There’s an absolute zero percent chance the school will take any action. “Who won?”

Waverly hesitates too long. “Madame Pomfrey says your ribs only need another hour--”

“I want to be alone,” Nicole interrupts, and rolls over to face away, even though the position makes her body scream. She curls her face into the mattress and tries not to cry. After a minute the mattress shifts, Waverly clambering on. “What’re you doing?”

“You’ll feel better after a cuddle,” Waverly says firmly. She wiggles down and drags Nicole against her.

“I’ve never cuddled in my life,” Nicole says, resisting.

“Then you don’t know it won’t work.” Waverly pokes Nicole in her injured ribs, and when she goes boneless from the pain she tucks herself around Nicole, determined. Nicole grumbles. “Be quiet. This isn’t entirely altruistic, you know. I’ve always wanted to be the big spoon.”

“Champ wouldn’t let you?” Cautiously, Nicole relaxes into the curve of Waverly’s body. Waverly tucks her chin against Nicole’s neck.

“I think it threatened his masculinity.”

“Champ’s a moron,” Nicole mutters.

“And Kylie’s a bitch,” Waverly says, fiercely angry on Nicole’s behalf, and it’s enough that Nicole lets herself doze, her ribs knitting back up to protect her heart. “Maybe they should date each other,” Waverly muses, and they snicker.

//

Waverly wakes Nicole up when she’s allowed to leave and makes Nicole wear her cloak, even though it’s ludicrously too short. They’re shuffling out when Nicole sees Kylie on another bed. She freezes, surprised, and Kylie glares at her. Waverly grabs Nicole’s hand, head held high, and drags her away. “What happened to her?”

“Um,” Waverly says.

Nicole narrows her eyes. “Where’s Wynonna?”

“Jeez, you really will be a good Auror.” Waverly chirps the password to the Fat Lady and drags Nicole up to her room. She shares a complicated series of looks with Chrissy Nedley and then they’re alone. She tries to put Nicole to bed, clucking about rest, and Nicole flips them to pin Waverly against the mattress.

“Spill.” Waverly presses her lips together, mulish, and Nicole digs her fingers into Waverly’s sides.

“No,” Waverly squeaks around helpless giggles. “Stop it! This is angry laughter!” Nicole continues, relentless, and finally Waverly groans. “Fine, fine.” Nicole sits back on Waverly’s hips and Waverly pushes up onto her elbows. “After you fell, everyone was distracted with getting you off the field.”

“Right,” Nicole says, because she’d figured that much.

“And Wynonna hit a bludger at… that girl’s face.” Waverly looks angry just thinking about Kylie, and it makes Nicole feel flushed and heady, warmed. Then she processes what Waverly’s said and gapes.

“No.” It’s not a breach of rules so much as it is a serious breach of player etiquette--when someone’s injured you stop, floating patiently, until they’re off the pitch. Beaters have even been known to shield opposing players during the temporary ceasefire.

“Yeah. And then uh, she kept hitting it at Kylie’s face. Like, it would rebound off and she’d just--” Waverly mimes swinging the bat. “Until Kylie admitted what happened. Then I guess she lost her temper--”

“Then she lost her temper?”

“Don’t interrupt me, I’m not finished. Yeah, so then she got angry so she jumped off her broom and tackled Kylie, and then Madame Hooch got there.”

Nicole gapes. “Is… she okay?”

“Yeah, Kylie’s just bruised, broken nose. Wynonna’s… you know. In Wynonna trouble.”

Nicole frowns at the bedspread. “It’s my fault. I was stupid.”

Waverly sits up all the way, their faces very close together. “You’re not stupid.”

Waverly’s face is screwed up, anger and indignation and hurt, all on Nicole’s behalf, and her skin is faintly flushed from laughter, her hair mussed. She’s beautiful, Nicole thinks, not for the first time.

//

They nap for awhile, and then go to the kitchens to pick up some food. Waverly tickles the pear and Nicole blinks. “Wait, you just have to poke the painting?”

“Yeah, why? How’d Wynonna figure it out?” A threatening jab and a promise of sectumsempra, but Nicole just shrugs. They wrap pastries in napkins and go wait for Wynonna outside the Dungeons, where she’s finishing up one of many, many detentions to come.

“Ooh,” she says, shoveling a bearclaw in her mouth. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” Waverly preens.

“Not really,” Nicole mumbles, guilty. Wynonna rolls her eyes.

“It’s not like I did it for you,” she says. “I was just doing my job. Beaters are supposed to hit bludgers.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, “at the other team.” Wynonna shrugs.

“I don’t know, I was drunk when they explained the rules.”

They walk down the halls, and they still get looks from other students and Nicole is still pretty much radio-silent with her roommates and she still hears whispers about Wynonna being crazy, being a killer, and sometimes Waverly’s stupid ex-boyfriend Champ tries to hex her under the table during Charms, and at some point she’s going to have to go talk to Kylie and then grovel to her team, but right now she’s got a friend on either side and she loves them.

“Guys,” she says when they’re outside by the lake, Wynonna eating donuts with glee and Waverly three inches into a Potions essay. “About Kylie. I uh, I mean. I like…” she trails off, helpless and nervous, her fingers twisting against each other.

“Yeah,” Wynonna says, powdered sugar on her nose and up one side of her cheek. “We get it, you’re a very special unicorn.”

Waverly flicks her in the forehead. “Don’t be like that, this is an important moment for Nicole.”

Nicole flops on her back and watches the clouds roll around, the sun disappearing over the horizon. “No it’s not.” She grins at the sky. “It’s fine.”

Chapter Text

“It’s cognitive dissonance,” Waverly says, trying to help Nicole study for Transfigurations.

“No,” Nicole says, “it’s a chair that doesn’t want to be an iguana.”

“No, why you can’t do it.” Waverly brushes her hair back over one shoulder. “It’s like… you know you can change the chair into a lizard, but you don’t know it.”

Nicole glares at the chair. “So?”

“Try closing your eyes.” She puts a palm over Nicole’s eyes and Nicole sighs. Her eyelashes flutter against Waverly when she blinks. “Now just… will the chair to turn. Make it turn.”

Nicole screws her face up and moves her wand, feeling the thrum of the spell up her arm. The chair squawks. She opens her eyes. It’s a chicken, pecking at the grass. She groans. “I’m going to fail.”

“You’re amazing at Charms.” Waverly is trying to cheer her up and Nicole does feel a little flash of pride that Waverly’s noticed, because Nicole is amazing at Charms, but mostly she feels morose that her whole life plan is in jeopardy over cognitive dissonance, of all things. “Aren’t chickens and lizards related? Like… distantly?” Waverly has switched modes to supportive, but she’s also clearly hiding a giggle. Nicole rips up a tuft of grass and throws it at Waverly’s face. Waverly smiles then frowns, the joy leaking away. “Has Wynonna… talked to you lately?”

Nicole shrugs. “Just the usual.”

Waverly’s frown deepens. “She’s being weird. I was hoping she’d talk to you if not to me.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Waverly’s still frowning. “Promise?”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, because she itches to get Waverly to stop feeling so blue. “I promise.” She’s done this promise before, the other way, and it seems only fair to promise Waverly the same way she’d promised Wynonna.

//

Nicole follows Wynonna at night. She layers charms on her shoes and her robes, soft-steps and notice-me-nots and look-aways, and it takes her only a moment to convince the room of requirement to let her in. She has a moment of triumph before it dilutes into horror.

“Oh, gross.” She spins around to face the wall.

“You’re the one walking in,” Wynonna says, hopping back into her pants, flushed. “Doc--John Henry was just leaving.” He fades through the wall.

“He’s a ghost? How do you even--” Nicole shakes her head. “Nevermind. I don’t want to know. What’s going on with you?”

Wynonna looks indignant. “Just because Dolls doesn’t want me doesn’t mean I’m, what, unfuckable--”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake.” Nicole props her hands on her hips. “You know what I mean. And he does want you.”

Wynonna scoffs, chewing on her lip. “Okay. C’mere.” She drags Nicole outside, closes the door, and screws up her face in concentration. Then she opens the room again and Nicole follows her inside.

“Woah.”

The walls are layered with old clippings, moving pictures, pages of notes. “When we were little,” Wynonna says, tracing over a picture of a man and three girls, “Death Eaters came to our manor and killed my sister.” Nicole knows, but not because Wynonna’d told her, so she stays quiet. Wynonna turns at her, fire burning in her eyes. Her wand glows under her sleeve. “I’m going to find them all.”

“Okay.” Nicole taps her fingers against her leg. “Yeah, okay. We should tell Waverly.”

“No!” Wynonna glares. “I’m trusting you, okay? To keep Waverly safe. Will you help me do that?”

“You know you can,” Nicole says, meaningfully. “We made sure of it.”

//

“I think Waverly’s getting suspicious,” Nicole says, tromping after Wynonna in the dark.

“Yeah, well. She’s smart.” Wynonna stops. “Wait here?”

“I know the drill.” She watches Wynonna duck and weave, avoiding the thrashing limbs, until she cheerfully punches the right spot on the trunk and the Whomping Willow freezes. She flaps a hand and Nicole trots after her.

They emerge in the Shrieking Shack, and Wynonna takes down the ward hiding her bag of holding. Nicole sits against the wall, pulling a binder towards her. “She’s better at this than both of us put together. We might have actually gotten somewhere with her.”

“I get it, we’re both idiots and the sun shines out of Waverly’s ass.” Wynonna opens a folder of pictures at the table. “When I asked you to look out for her, I thought you’d be her friend, not her personal cheerleader.”

“I can be both.” Nicole squints at an arrest photo. “This would be easier with Muggle photos.” The man twists, hiding his face and making rude gestures. She flips the page and stops. “Hey, hand me that picture again? The one of the seven?”

There’s a dark red X through one of their faces. Wynonna sees her looking. “Died in Azkaban last week. Fucker.”

“Mm.” Nicole holds the picture up to the book she’s referencing. “I think--” She feels the ward give out, a bell ringing in her head, and she sucks in a gasp, the book falling from numb fingers. “Earp--” Wynonna’s wandtip presses against her temple.

“Episkey.” Her voice has dropped to a tense, cautious murmur. “The wards?”

“Yeah.” Nicole shakes her head rapidly and slips her wand into her hand. “Please don’t point your defective wand at my brain.”

“Shut up. Peacemaker fixed your headache, admit it.” They shuffle, pressed together, whispering.

“I hate that nickname,” Nicole mutters, and the wall next to her face explodes. Wynonna jerks her back and Nicole throws a Protego up just before jets of red light flash against it. They split, scrambling to find cover. Nicole hears wings, beating fast and angry. “Conjured somethings,” she hisses, and Wynonna nods.

Wynonna sticks her wand out from the rotting sofa: “Impedimenta.”

As soon as the last syllable is out of her mouth, Nicole pops up from under a table. “Oppugno. The sounds of the wings change, and then she hears two distinct voices, yelping and swearing. She grabs Wynonna by the hand and drags her toward the back wall.

Wynonna resists. “What? We can take them.”

“We are sixth years,” Nicole hisses, yanking on Wynonna’s arm. “They are Death Eaters.”

“I’m a seventh year,” Wynonna mutters, but she stops trying to pull them around. “There’s no back door.”

Nicole can’t hear wings anymore. “We’ll make one.” They cast blasting curses at the same time, and when they go through the hole at a run, the jagged edges cut Nicole’s skin, ripping her robes. They burst out onto the cold, abandoned road, the snow up to their calves. “Tell me you know how to Apparate,” she pants.

“Haven’t gotten around to it.” Wynonna says.

Nicole tightens her grip on Wynonna’s hand. “How hard can it be?”

“What?” Wynonna’s eyes go wide, then she screws them shut. “Think of Hogsmead,” she orders. “Remember, you can’t Apparate to Hogwarts. The Three Broomsticks.”

“Okay.” Nicole takes a deep, steadying breath and tries to focus on what she’s read about Apparition. Destination, Determination, Deliberation.

//

She remembers feeling like she’s been stretched out and she remembers feeling the muscles and the skin tear and she remembers being surprised at how warm her blood feels and how dark it looks, soaking through her robes and spreading over the snow. She remembers screaming.

//

She wakes up and Waverly bursts into tears. “I’m really glad you’re okay,” she says, and Nicole reaches to comfort her even as her vision stays blurry, pain thumping through her body.

“What happened?”

“You--”

“You’re awake,” a man says, stepping forward. “Good. Come with me.”

“No,” Waverly protests, “she has to--you should be out looking for Wynonna!”

“Stand aside girl, this is Ministry business.”

They march her, limping in a hospital gown and Waverly’s hastily gifted cloak, to a hearing. She stammers out the truth on the stand, over and over, until she realizes no one there is interested in the truth. She meant to explain exactly what they were doing there until she sees Waverly in the gallery, shaking her head, eyes pleading. Nicole swallows it back and focuses on their run through the shack, trying to Apparate to safety. They press her on it, demanding why she and Wynonna had snuck off school grounds, and she lands on a believable excuse on the fly.

“I’m gay,” she blurts, for the first time in her life, and the witches and wizards blink at her apparent non-sequitur. “We were…” she fumbles, watches comprehension dawn.

The wizard questioning her rallies. “Why would you have to leave Hogwarts to…” he can’t even say it, and Nicole takes a gamble.

“I’m muggleborn. And the wizarding world isn’t known for its progressiveness.” She sees the truth of her words as soon as she says them, and it hurts, in a faded way. Whatever hope she’d had that her new world would be better than her old one, she’d lost the third time someone had tripped her in the halls and hissed Mudblood. People are people everywhere, and people hate.

Another wizard stands to question her, and she bursts. “I’m sorry, but don’t I get a representative? You’re treating me like I did something wrong.”

“The school has waived your rights to an advocate,” the witch acting as judge says.

“Those weren’t their rights to waive.”

“Muggle guardians are not recognized by the Ministry for criminal hearings. As such, Hogwarts stands in place until you’re of age.” Nicole grits her teeth.

“I didn’t do anything criminal.”

“Maybe not. Maybe Wynonna Earp did.”

“What?”

“Maybe she coerced you. If she used an Unforgivable, you wouldn’t be held accountable--”

“Accountable? We were both attacked. You should be trying to help her right now, instead of treating me like a criminal!”

They excuse her, and an Auror witch walks her into an antechamber, standing at the door like a guard. Nicole paces, fuming. Her shoulder hurts persistently, burning, and she’s on lap six of the room when a bolt of red light hits the Auror in between the shoulderblades and she topples. Nicole’s in a defensive stance, wand at the ready, but it’s just Dolls, hands raised appeasingly as he comes in the room.

“They’re not going after her,” he says. “Will you help me?”

Nicole gapes at him. “You just stunned an Auror. You’re Head Boy.”

“I’m aware.” He stares her down. “I think you remember something. I think you can help.”

Nicole shifts, her wand still up. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because I do.” Waverly slides through the still open door, face white but determined. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” The answer comes so quick, so automatic, that she sees Dolls blink in surprise. “But I really don’t know anything. I don’t remember anything.”

A blue beetle, glinting darkly, flutters in and hovers next to Dolls’ ear, buzzing in short sharp bursts. “Not here,” he says. “How do you feel about a jailbreak?”

//

Dolls Apparates them into a dusty kitchen, and Nicole sits down hard on the floor. Waverly conjures up a paper bag and gets it to her just in time. “Apparating so soon after splinching isn’t a good idea,” Waverly frets, rubbing Nicole’s back in soothing circles. “We should have portkeyed.”

Dolls hands Nicole a bottle of water. “I didn’t have a portkey. She’ll be fine in a minute. Is it ready?”

“Almost. We didn’t even ask her yet.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Nicole says weakly. She grabs the counter and pulls herself up. “What’s going on? Where are we?”

“Earp Manor.” Waverly takes the bottle from Nicole’s hand before she can drop it.

“I’m pretty sure they won’t say she’s a Death Eater,” Dolls says, “but they won’t send anyone to look for her, either.” He goes to the couch and touches a stack of papers. “This is Waverly’s research. We think we’ve narrowed it down to five places.”

“Waverly’s research?”

“Yes, my research.” Waverly is at the stove, stirring something bubbly and shimmery. “I know this could be bad for you,” she says to Nicole, “you can tell them we kidnapped you, if you want. We kind of did.”

“Of course I’ll help,” Nicole says. “But I really don’t remember anything.”

“Splinch trauma.” Waverly does something that makes the pot screech and burp blue flame. “This’ll help. Just give me a minute to finish it.”

Dolls pulls Nicole into the living room. “I could use some backup, once we’ve figured out where she is. You’re good in a fight, right?”

“Not good enough to help Wynonna.” Nicole’s fast twists, bitter. “How do we even know she’s still alive?” Waverly drops the spoon with a clatter, then picks it up again.

“Are you willing to try?”

Nicole chews on her lip. “I’ll take the potion. And I’m going with you. But I have a condition.”

“A condition? For saving your friend?” Nicole lets her eyes slide to Waverly, filling an eyedropper at the stove.

“Already planned,” Dolls says. They shake on it.

The potion has the texture of silly putty and tastes like sour milk, Waverly bent over her on the couch, three drops on her tongue. Nicole closes her eyes and focuses on swallowing. “Give it a minute,” Waverly says, apologetic. “If I was better at potions it wouldn't taste as bad.”

“Only fifteen wizards in the country right now could brew that,” Dolls says briskly, “and none of them are fifth years.” Nicole slumps abruptly to the side, against the arm of the couch. “Okay, she’s ready.”

Nicole feels dissociated; the world has taken on an eerie, otherworldly hue. She brings her hand up and moves her fingers one by one. “She looks high,” Dolls says.

“Yeah. Well, I had to add some other ingredients, to help with remembering. And substitute some ingredients I didn’t have. Also, it’s supposed to be brewed under the gibbous moon--” She catches sight of Dolls’ face. “--uh, but it’s fine. It should work.” She rubs Nicole’s knee. “Nicole? I’m going to ask you some questions now.”

“Okay.”

“What’s your name?”

Nicole frowns. “You don’t know my name?” She sighs deeply. “Nicole Haught.”

“Where were you born?”

“Colorado.”

“What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

“Miller.”

“Ask her to lie,” Dolls says, “see if it’s really working.”

Waverly puts her hand on Nicole’s cheek, turning her head to catch her eyes. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to try and lie, okay?”

“Okay,” Nicole agrees. She cants her face into Waverly’s hand, nuzzling, and Waverly withdraws, blushing.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three,” Nicole says immediately. She frowns, licking her lips. “Wait, let me try…” She clenches her fists, grits her teeth. She sucks in a shaky breath. “I can’t--I’m sorry, I can’t--” She groans, her head thumping. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Waverly assures her, “it’s good.”

Nicole smiles, tentative, “You’re not mad?”

“Promise,” Waverly says, and Nicole gets distracted by her eyelashes against her cheek, her pretty eyes.

“I want you to give me butterfly kisses,” she says seriously, and Waverly chokes, coughing.

“Let’s get to it?” Dolls asks.

“Yes,” Waverly says, her voice pitched high, “let’s.”

Dolls clears his throat, settling on the coffee table in front of her, and she keeps looking at Waverly until he clears his throat again, louder. Nicole casts him a quick look then goes back to Waverly. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Waverly says, her face very bright red.

“Haught,” Dolls calls firmly, and she turns to him, sighing. “You and Wynonna were researching the attack on her family.”

“Yes. We found a picture of the group that was attacking pure blood Auror families, and Wynonna recognized a few of them. We were trying to match them to court documents, family trees, newspaper clippings.”

Waverly snorts. “I already had five of the seven identified, if either of you had bothered to ask.”

Dolls ignores her. “Let’s talk about that day. Think back. What do you remember?”

“Waverly,” Nicole says, soft, “smiling at me, over breakfast.” Waverly makes another choking noise, so Nicole hands her the water bottle on the table.

“Thank you,” Waverly says, faint.

“Fast forward a little,” Dolls instructs. “You went to the Shrieking Shack.”

“The wards,” Nicole says. She remembers waving her wand, chanting. “I put up the wards and--I thought I’d found one of them. I asked Wynonna to give me the picture.”

“Good. What happened next?”

“I felt the wards go. It hurt.” She winces, the memory of pain lancing through her temples.

“You were attacked.”

“Two people.” Nicole furrows her eyebrows. “We blew out the back wall. Wynonna wanted to fight, but I told her to run. We tried to Apparate.”

“You splinched because someone grabbed you. Someone pulled Wynonna away.”

“I don’t remember. My eyes were closed.”

“But maybe you opened them,” Dolls wheedles, “maybe just a little--”

Nicole flinches. “I tried to Apparate, it hurt.” Her voice pitches higher, “it hurts, I’m bleeding, I--” She sucks in a shuddering breath, seeking out Waverly’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Waverly says, her eyes spilling over, her voice breaking. “I know you tried.”

“Sight isn’t your only sense, Miss Haught.” Dolls leaps to his feet, drawing his wand, and Waverly shrieks, shocked. Nicole tips her head back and peers at the ghost in the corner.

“Hi, John Henry.”

“Hello, Nicole.”

“He’s okay,” Nicole tells Dolls. “He loves Wynonna. They’re fornicating.”

“They are?” Waverly yelps. She recovers quickly. “I mean, I knew that. But also, how--”

“I know who he is,” Dolls interrupts, low and angry. “We don’t need him.”

“We need all the help we can get,” Waverly snaps, “so everyone shut up and get back to helping Nicole remember.”

“What did he smell like?” John Henry asks her. “Close your eyes.”

Nicole complies, obedient. “I didn’t feel anyone grab me, but someone was there, close to us. He smelled like…” she frowns.

Dolls interrupts her attempts at remembering. “How’d you know it was a he?”

“I heard them, when we were fighting.”

“He smelled like…” John Henry prods her back on track.

“Musty. Like--” she frowns, something on the tip of her tongue, fighting to get free. She swings herself into Waverly’s lap, ignoring her startled squeaks, and tucks her nose into Waverly neck.

“Help,” Waverly hisses. Dolls lays a cautious hand on Nicole’s elbow and she growls.

“Maybe she’s remembering something.”

“She’s smelling me.”

Nicole noses down Waverly’s neck into her robes and down her arm, Waverly’s sweater soft under her skin. Then she slides back into her seat, triumphant. “Like books. Old books, and tingle.”

“Tingle?” Dolls asks, at the same time Waverly sputters:

“I smell like old books? Musty?”

“Magic tingle,” Nicole explains.

“Okay,” Dolls says, shuffling through the files. “Old books, magic--there’s a research hospital here, and a library.”

“Bleach,” Nicole remembers, the sharp sting in her nose when her skin was ripping itself apart.

“Hospital it is--where’d he go?” Dolls stands. “Doc?” He goes into the kitchen, then curses, slamming a fist against the counter. “He took her wand.”

“What?” Waverly rushes to the kitchen, ruffling through the trash on the counters, the equipment and ingredients. “Shit. Well now we know he’s definitely a poltergeist.”

“It’s fine,” Dolls says, taking a breath. “We can use blood magic, now that we have a location. And I still have her necklace.” Nicole rolls the back of her head on the couch and hums. “Can you do something about her before we leave?”

“Me,” Nicole agrees, and giggles.

//

Dolls is looking into her eyes, frowning. “Your face is going to get stuck that way,” she tells him. Her mouth still tastes like the peppery red potion Waverly’d made her drink a minute ago, and she feels a little more like a real person.

“I don’t want to wait any longer. Are you functional, Haught?”

“Yes,” Nicole rasps, the answer pulled from her chest. “Good enough to fight.” Waverly moves her wand over the bandages on her shoulder, murmuring: Episkey, Episkey. “Your potions don’t taste as sweet as you,” Nicole tells her, and Waverly slips on the third repetition of her healing chant. Dolls cuts them a look.

“She’s never tasted me,” Waverly protests, “she’s just high.”

“No,” Nicole agrees, wistful, “not ever.” Dolls lobs a jelly legs hex at her and she blocks it, absentminded.

“Good enough,” he says. “Let’s go.” He grabs Nicole’s elbow and she yanks herself away.

“We had a deal.”

“So we did,” he agrees. “Stupefy.” Waverly crumples, the stun hitting her square in the chest, and Nicole lunges to catch her, ease her down to the rug. Then she grabs Dolls by the collar and slams him into a wall, snarling. He shoves her hands away, keeping a tight grip on her wrists, and Apparates them.

//

“You’re a dick,” she groans, but manages not to throw up again. They’re standing in what looks like a reception area, the wood desk all rotted. Dolls points at the footprints in the dust.

“Stealth charms?” he asks, and she casts them quick and careful, on their clothes, their shoes. She taps her wand against his vocal cords, then hers. They separate to the opposite walls. “Test,” Dolls says, the barest whisper, and Nicole can hear him like he’s talking directly into her ear.

“Test,” she says back, and he nods. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, dotted with Waverly’s blood, Wynonna’s necklace glinting, and moves his wand in a quick complicated motion, murmuring. A tiny green orb rises from Waverly’s blood and rolls in the air once before starting a slow floating crawl through the door on the left. Nicole takes a deep breath, steadies her sweaty grip on her wand, and walks, shoulder to shoulder with Dolls, down the hallway.

The dust lies heavy in her lungs and she thinks she understands, for the first time, why Muggles shy away from magical places. She can feel the magic here, sinister and greasy and cloying on her senses, and it makes her heart rabbit, fear a thick taste on her tongue. The orb leads them into what used to have been an operating room. There’s a body on the table, covered by a sheet that falls oddly on the torso, soaked through with blood. Brown hair tumbles past the sheet, hanging off the table, and Dolls hesitates before yanking the sheet off in a single motion, letting it flutter to the floor.

The first feeling that hits Nicole is relief: it’s not Wynonna. The next is empathy, grief. Horror. The dead girl’s face is twisted in a grotesque mask of fear and pain. Then Nicole looks at the rest of her body and has to turn away, the breath shocked from her lungs. The girl is split open, her ribs jutting up white and pointed and Nicole never thought the inside of someone’s body would be that pink, the organs that big, not once in her life. She fights back the urge to vomit and doesn’t look at the table again, the girl a blur in her periphery vision. She grabs Dolls by the sleeve, whiter than she’s ever seen him, and they stagger through the next doorway, the orb floating serenely in front of them, Wynonna’s necklace tight across his fingers like a brass knuckle rosary.

//

They’ve been walking for another ten minutes, through windy[,] dusty hallways and rooms strewn with rusted metal and stained linens, when John Henry flies in front of them, through one wall and out of sight through another before zipping back into their field of view. “Hurry,” he says urgently, “Wynonna--” a boom shakes the facility, rattling Nicole’s teeth, and she takes off after John Henry, Dolls hot on her heels.

It takes longer than it should, because Dolls took the straightest line to them and now has to trace his way back for people who can’t move through walls, course correcting with a litany of curses, but eventually they burst into a room, the door rebounding off the wall with a bang. A blasting curse streaks towards Nicole, and she redirects on extinct, sending it hurtling through the window to her left. She’s midcast on a retaliatory curse when she realizes it’s Wynonna in front of her, in a hospital gown and panicked eyes, and she changes it to a defensive spell just in time to block another curse, her brain thumping at the abrupt reversal.

“Earp,” Dolls says, soothing, and steps out from beyond the blue shimmer of her shield. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” Wynonna just stares at them, shaking. Her arms are bleeding, manacles still dangling from her right wrist, and her wand is clutched too tight in her fingers. Dolls moves to step forward and Nicole throws an arm across his chest.

She jerks her head at a pile of jumbled chairs and bedpans in the corner. “Transfigure her something to wear.” She drops her shield and makes her body language soft and non-threatening. “Hey, Wynonna. You okay?”

Wynonna blinks at them once, twice. Her wand falls to her side. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Dolls hands her thin sweatpants, a t-shirt, his own hoodie, and turns his back. Nicole helps Wynonna dress, careful not to touch her, then pulls her into a loose hug, releasing as soon as the embrace begins.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says. “I love you.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Wynonna echoes back, after a confused pause, “I thought… how did you find me? Why is it just… you two?”

“Blood magic,” Nicole says, the potion yanking the truth from her before Dolls can soften it. “We’re alone because the Ministry thinks you’re a Death Eater who’s faking it for attention, and Dolls stunned Waverly.”

“What?” Wynonna whirls on Dolls. “You stunned Waverly?” Peacemaker rises, threatening.

“He also stunned an Auror,” Nicole says. “And broke me out of a Ministry hearing. And stole evidence. And had Waverly make controlled, illegal potions--”

“Thank you, Haught,” Dolls snapped, “that’s enough.”

“We’re all wanted by the Ministry,” Nicole finishes.

Dolls nudges her back. “We’ll explain everything later. Where’s--” Wynonna points to the small door behind her. “I’m really glad,” he says quietly, “that you’re okay.” She leans her head on his shoulder and he lays a cautious hand on her hip. They stand like that, stiff and touching, until the tiles in the hallway creak. Dolls pushes Wynonna behind him and she shoves back to beside him, Nicole moving out of their line of fire. They aim three wands at the door, threatening, jaws set.

A small coyote trots in, nails clicking. It shoots a poisonous look at Dolls then shifts midyawn, bright white fangs, into Waverly, who throws herself at Wynonna. Wynonna catches her, dragging her close.

“You can Apparate?” she asks.

“You’re an Animagus,” Dolls says, overlapping and shocked.

Waverly ignores their questions, peering close to Wynonna’s eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Doc gave me Peacemaker, helped me. And then these two--” she gestures at Dolls and Nicole. “--my personal heroes.”

“I got here first,” John Henry mutters from a corner, half in the wall. “I came to save you first.”

“I saved myself,” Wynonna says, familiar steel in her tone. “What the hell do we do now? And when did you become a wolf?”

“Coyote,” Nicole corrects. She reaches out and pets Waverly’s hair.

Waverly pulls back, her hands on her hips. “Yes, I can Apparate, and yes, I’m an Animagus. Which you--” she jabs Nicole in the chest, “--would know if you weren’t chasing girls who don’t deserve you, and you--” she shoves at Wynonna’s shoulder “--would know if you weren’t sneaking around with old books, poltergeists, and our friends behind my back! I’m so mad at all of you.” She hugs Wynonna again, tight. “Now we’re going to call the Ministry and say that piece of shit kidnapped all of us from the hearing, and let the poor dead girl back there and the Dark Mark on his arm back us up.”

“You have the best plans,” Nicole says into the faintly shocked silence that follows. “You’re the best.” She pets her hair again.

Wynonna pulls Waverly slightly away. “Did the splinching affect her brain?”

“Waverly’s sweet,” Nicole explains, “but her potions are not.”

“Ah. You should go,” she says to John Henry. “Thanks, Doc.” He tips his hat, throws a last glare at Dolls, and fades through the floor.

“I’ll call the Ministry,” Dolls says. He leaves.

“You’re really okay?” Waverly asks, anxious.

“Yeah, but I uh,” Wynonna tucks her hair behind her ears, clearing her throat. Her eyes are suspiciously watery. “I killed him, Waves.”

“As long as you’re okay.” They hug again, leaning their foreheads against each other.

“Good,” Nicole says. “I’m glad he’s dead.” They both look at her and she shrugs. “What? I’m high.”

//

Waverly undoes the bandages winding around Nicole’s shoulder and armpit, and opens her wounds back up with big apologetic eyes, and Nicole doesn't feel much pain, not with Waverly’s hand around hers, comforting. Dolls and Wynonna and Waverly talk to the Aurors with Nicole tucked behind them, too ‘aggravated from her injuries’ to be questioned. “Good thing Hogwarts has a long sordid history of shit going down during the school year,” Waverly says while they’re waiting to be transported. Nicole reaches for her hair again and Wynonna slaps her hand out of the air.

They’re suspended until the start of the second term, after Christmas, and there’s only two weeks before the beginning of the winter holidays, so that all works out pretty well. Dolls gets released to his parents, leaving with a nod to them and without his Head Boy’s badge, and a cranky looking woman shows up to collect Waverly and Wynonna. There’s some arguing around Nicole, who’s been made to drink another potion by a proper Healer, which reacted oddly because they hadn’t confessed to what she’d already taken, and she misses all of what’s going on regarding her guardianship because she’s having the worst migraine of her entire life, breathing shallowly, her stomach cramping, her eyes screwed up against the light. She may be whimpering. All she knows is that Wynonna drags her to a portkey, one hand clapped helpfully over her eyes, and then she’s being tucked into a bed, the lights finally extinguished. She sleeps.

//

Nicole wakes up tucked under a quilt that feels homemade, faded and worn and warm. She groans. It takes her fifteen minutes to stagger into the kitchen, where Waverly’s at the stove frowning at a frying pan and Wynonna’s facedown at the dining room table. She looks as bad as Nicole feels. Waverly looks up, sees Nicole, and is opening her mouth for a greeting, probably, when Nicole dives for the sink and vomits, groaning again. “Ew,” Waverly says, her nose wrinkled up. “But also, huh.” She peers at the sink: Nicole’s puke is a swirl of bright colors and smells like cotton candy.

Nicole turns the faucet on to wash it down the drain. “Sorry.”

“No breakfast for you, I guess.”

“Too bad,” Wynonna mumbles against the table. “I could murder a stack of pancakes.”

Nicole thinks about pancakes and throws up again.

They hash out the puzzle pieces over pancakes, which Nicole doesn’t ever want to look at or think about ever again, and coffee, which she drinks determinedly until Waverly takes her mug away. Nicole had made it to the Three Broomsticks, it turns out, bleeding and babbling about dark wizards, and Waverly’d been dragged out of bed and questioned. Dolls had found her after, and spurred their impromptu jaunt into criminal activity: stealing evidence (Wynonna’s necklace and her wand) and absconding with material witnesses (Nicole) from the Ministry. After Waverly’d woken up from the stun she’d Apparated to the hospital and used her coyote nose to sniff them out. No one’s really sure how John Henry found out anything, or even how he’s able to leave school grounds.

“Go team,” Wynonna says, and takes a long drink from a whiskey bottle. Waverly doesn’t take it away, and Nicole reaches for the coffee pot--it’s nudged firmly out of her reach. Waverly hands her a glass of orange juice and ignores her disgruntled pouting. She hunches her back and tries to look pitiful and wounded. Waverly pats her good shoulder.

“Drink your juice.”

Nicole meets Gus at lunch, when she shows up with groceries and judgement and tries, unsuccessfully, to take Waverly with her when she leaves. “Technically,” Wynonna says while Gus and Waverly argue on the porch, “she’s your guardian now. Disappointment to the family shot?”

“Yeah, okay.” Nicole takes the bottle, which is noticeably lighter than it was at breakfast. She takes a slug and coughs. “Jesus Christ.”

//

For the first three days, Nicole falls asleep every time she sits still for longer than fifteen minutes: the couch, the chairs, the porch, and once, embarrassingly, in a bowl of soup. On the fourth day she makes it until five before slumping into the guest bed and passing out, on the fifth she feels almost normal. She spends the three days after that watching Wynonna do her level best to drink herself to death, and the next morning she pries the bottle out of her hand and drags her outside for dueling practice. It ends with her physically and magically exhausted, with pink hair and dust in her mouth, but seems to help Wynonna.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Waverly says quietly one night, doing dishes together the Muggle way.

“Me too.” When Waverly smiles at her Nicole drops a dish, suds slopping into her mouth.

Nicole wakes up early to the sounds of someone blasting outside her window, shattering glass. Waverly’s cussing in the kitchen, slamming around and muttering about stubborn assholes, and Nicole edges around her to go outside. Wynonna’s flinging curses against glass bottles lined up on the fence.

“I didn’t know wizards could be so Western,” Nicole says, squinting around. “More of a Homestead than a Manor.”

“How would you know? Muggles don’t know anything.” It’s unusually prejudiced, and Nicole stands quietly to let the guilt trip across her face. “Sorry.”

“Do you need an intervention?”

Wynonna laughs, a short sharp bark. “Not yet. I’ll let you know.” She sits on the ground and bows her head between her knees. “I didn’t think it would feel like this.”

“Being tortured?” Nicole ventures, and Wynonna flinches. Nicole swallows hard.

“Killing someone.”

“Oh.” Nicole is getting the distinct feeling of being out of her depth. “Wanna come inside and let Waverly yell at us some more?”

“Yeah.” They go inside and Waverly throws them lethal looks while serving them sandwiches and they eat too much and listen to something mindless on the wireless and fall asleep all over each other, in a pile.

//

Waverly sits them on the couch and a does a thorough, in depth presentation on the Seven. There are dossiers, and pictures, and a quiz at the end Nicole does poorly on because she was distracted by the way Waverly bounces on her toes when she’s passionate and the path of her hands in the air while she gestures. Then Waverly gives them their homework.

“No,” Wynonna grumbles, “I got suspended! No homework is like, the only perk.”

Nicole raises a hand. “What about the improper underaged magic thing?”

“We’re warded,” Wynonna says, still sour.

“After you finish for today, we can practice Apparating,” Waverly chirps. Nicole groans. Then she sighs, dragging a Potions book into her lap.

Waverly takes it away. “Nope.” She reaches into her bag of holding and comes up with an iguana, which she drops on the coffee table. “Chair,” she directs Nicole pointedly.

The iguana glares at Nicole. She glares back.

//

“I’m going crazy,” Wynonna says, slamming into Nicole’s room. She yelps, surprised, and Wynonna looks at the iguana on the bed, one leg partly wooden. “Crazier,” she continues. “We’ve gotta get out of here for a while.”

Nicole frowns. “Aren’t we on house arrest?” The iguana turns brown, a wood pattern appearing briefly over it, mocking, before going back to normal green. Nicole throws her pillow at it. “Nevermind, let’s go.”

Wynonna collects Waverly from the barn, where she’s brewing something Nicole probably doesn’t want to know about, and floo to a house Nicole doesn’t recognize, but Dolls is there to meet them, so she figures it must be his. They eat pizza on the floor of his immaculately organized bedroom and talk about what to do next.

“I don’t think we have to do anything,” Dolls says. “I was going to owl you. My contacts say they know you’re looking, and they might be eager for confrontation. This might have just been the beginning.” Nicole puts down her paper plate, no longer hungry.

“You have contacts?” Wynonna asks. “You’re seventeen.”

“I’ve already sat for my NEWTS and accepted a position with the Department of Mysteries. I’m not returning to Hogwarts.”

“Good,” Waverly says. “That’s good, right? We’ll have an Auror on our side.”

“Will you?” Wynonna’s got her closed off, defensive look on. “Be an ally? No hard feelings if you want to jump off the Crazy Earp Train,” she lies, playing with her crust. Dolls just looks at her. “Okay,” she says, clearly fighting a smile through a mouthful of dough.

“Why now?” Nicole muses. “I mean, we were researching, but come on. We’re kids. I can’t imagine we posed anyone a real threat. They could have killed you when you were babies, why wait?”

“I turn seventeen soon,” Wynonna offers. “Legally of age. And I don’t think anyone in the Ministry would shed a tear if I turned up dead. Or missing.”

“Someone in the Ministry would,” Dolls says, and they smile at each other again. There’s another beat of silence.

“So we don’t know anything,” Waverly says. She sighs. “Fuck.”

//

“It’s not hard,” Waverly assures. “Just jump from here to the porch. You can even see it through the window.”

“I know,” Nicole says, gritting her teeth. “Just… give me a minute.” She breathes shallowly. The long thin silvery scars that wrap around her shoulder ache.

“You did it right before,” Waverly says quietly. “You only splinched because someone tried to stop you.” She takes Nicole’s hand, her palm soft and dry, and Nicole stares at her while the world swirls and twists around them. They reappear on the porch and Waverly’s smile is the sun, beaming at her.

Wynonna and Nicole go to the Apparation licensing test together, with Gus as their guardian. Nicole still hasn’t shared more than two sentences with the older woman, and she’s perfectly happy to keep it that way. But when Wynonna goes to take the test they’re alone, and Gus pins her with a sharp gaze. “You’re close with them, my Earp girls.”

“I guess.”

“I love Wynonna,” Gus says quietly, and she doesn’t look intimidating so much as softly regretful. “But she’s as broken as they come.”

“She’s not,” Nicole says, fiercely loyal. Gus looks at her for a long moment and Nicole meets her gaze, defiant.

“You’ll look out for Waverly?” Nicole nods, but drops her eyes, and something must pass over her face because Gus catches it between two palms, locking their eyes, and her pupils go shimmery and gold for a few seconds. “What did you do?” she asks, sharp and almost panicked. “You fool girl, what--”

“Gus?” Wynonna is approaching them, the triumphant smile sliding away as she takes them in.

Gus whirls to face her. “Did you make her do this? Of all the stupid ideas--”

“We both agreed,” Nicole snaps, yanking herself away and to her feet. “There’s nothing you can do about it now.” She stomps off and is unforgivably rude to the poor wizard in charge of testing her, but passes easily.

When she returns Gus and Wynonna are sitting apart, stiff and angry and hurt, and Gus signs all the forms without looking at them. “Think about what I said,” she says to Wynonna when they’re outside, and Apparates away.

“What’s she talking about?”

“Nothing.” Wynonna reaches for Nicole’s hand. Nicole takes it, but gives her a sharp yank before she can Apparate.

“Don’t make me splinch you.”

“She gave me money,” Wynonna admits. Her free hand fishes in her robes and comes out with a pouch, jangling. “To take off.” Nicole snatches it away. “Hey!”

“No problem. I’ll hold onto this for you.”

“Did you just rob me?”

“Yeah, go ahead and report me.” Nicole Apparates them into the kitchen, where Waverly is waiting to either cheer or commiserate. She brightens when she sees them.

“You passed!”

“Yup,” Nicole says, accepting Waverly’s congratulatory hug and ignoring Wynonna’s poleaxed expression. “Dinner’s on Wynonna.”

//

Nicole settles into a sort of routine. She wakes up, has coffee with Wynonna while Waverly tries to convince them to switch to tea, then drags herself through her academics so she won’t be completely behind when she gets back to school. Then she and Wynonna hex the hell out of each other while Waverly cheers one or both of them on, depending on who was snarkiest at breakfast, after which loser makes lunch. Wynonna goes off with Dolls and Nicole skulks around the barn while Waverly works.

“You need a side project,” Waverly tells her, when Nicole is poking around her carefully organized equipment and muttering darkly about asshole iguanas. “You’re smart and you’re talented, go do something helpful. You can use our owls to order materials.”

“Your owls?”

Nicole hangs out with the owls for a while, feeding them treats from her palm, and does order a few things. Second hand books, ingredients, and some other things. When Waverly opens the first package, she scoffs at the state of the books, and presses money into Nicole’s protesting hands.

“You’re basically an Earp,” she says, and Nicole carves out a space in the attic to experiment.

One night Wynonna and Dolls go off to meet his contacts, so Nicole and Waverly eat dinner alone, feet brushing under the table, and Waverly shifts into her coyote form and lets Nicole pet her silky soft ears before running figure eights in the yard, tongue lolling while Nicole drinks a butterbeer on the porch with her feet kicked up on the railing.

Nicole turns the iguana into a chair and whoops so loudly Wynonna and Waverly kick her door down, wands raised. “Aw,” Wynonna says, “I kind of liked him.” The chair looks old and creaky and still smells like lizard shit, but it’s a chair.

“We’re going to celebrate,” she says firmly, and Apparates them to a big city. She takes them to the movies with the last of her Muggle money and laughs when they gape. Wynonna eats all the popcorn before the trailers are over and Nicole splits chocolate candies with Waverly. It’s some action movie, brainless and ridiculous, and Wynonna and Waverly stare up at the big screen, transfixed. Nicole works up her courage in the dark and takes Waverly’s hand during a big explosion, her heart thumping. She doesn’t have to let go until the end credits roll.

//

Nicole braves the barn with a bandana tied around her nose and mouth. “Don’t shoot,” Waverly says, her hands raised. Nicole blinks at her. “Because… you look like an old-timey bandit?” Nicole takes the bandana off.

“I wasn’t sure if it’d be toxic in here or not. I’ve been on the wrong side of your potions before.”

Waverly huffs. “I told you, it was supposed to be brewed under a gibbous--it worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Nicole crowds her against the wall, moving slow enough Waverly could walk away if she wanted to. She doesn’t.

“You were pretty out of it. And you were kind of… handsy. With me. My hair.”

Nicole shrugs. “I see something I like, I don't wanna wait.” It’s a pretty good line, even if she had to practice for fifteen minutes in front of the mirror.

“We’ve known each other since I was eleven. You’ve been waiting almost six years.”

“You’re assuming I liked you at first sight,” Nicole says, and Waverly arches a challenging eyebrow, which cuts a little too close to something she doesn’t want Waverly to know, not yet, so she switches tacks. “And I wasn’t about to hit on an eleven year old.”

“No, just… Kylie.” Waverly sneers when she says the name, and Nicole can’t help her grin.

“I didn’t know her when I was eleven. You sound jealous.”

“A little,” Waverly says, and goes on her tip toes to catch Nicole in a kiss, black tea and the sharp cheese they had for breakfast, and Nicole clenches her fists by her sides before curling a hand on Waverly’s waist, the other around her wrist on Nicole’s shoulder, anchoring.

//

Nicole falls asleep in her attic work space, and wakes to thumping on the ceiling. She sticks her head out the window. “Wynonna?” A hand drops down, and Nicole lets Wynonna haul her up with a grunt of effort and a mild floating charm. “Why aren’t you asleep?” Nicole asks, when they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the roof, their legs dangling off.

“There’s a prophecy about me,” Wynonna admits. “That’s why Dolls knew I’d really been kidnapped. Probably the only reason he’s interested in me.”

“I don’t think so,” Nicole says while she tries to absorb that. She remembers how pinched Dolls’ looked while Wynonna was missing. Wynonna lights a cigarette, puffing with little sad breaths. She offers it to Nicole. “Sure,” she agrees, taking it. She tosses it off the roof. Wynonna glares. “Prophecy?”

Wynonna blows out a big sigh. “Something about killing those seven Death Eaters, the Earp Heir. That’s me. Should have been Willa, but…” she trails off and lights another cigarette. Nicole lets her take a single drag before snatching it from her lips and sending it the way of the first. “You’re annoying, you know that?” Nicole shrugs. “You might start a fire.”

“We’re big bad witch bitches with great asses, we could handle it.”

“We do have great asses, don’t we?”

“Top shelf.” They sit in silence for a few minutes. Nicole looks at the stars. She wonders if this sky is different than the one above the Great Hall.

“You and Waverly have been close. You two best friends now?”

“Sure,” Nicole says, “just like you and Dolls.”

Wynonna snorts. “I don’t think it’s exactly the same.” Nicole doesn’t say anything, and their breaths puff out in clouds, mixed together before disappearing. “She’ll be mad, when she finds out what we did. If Gus tells her.”

“Probably.” Nicole’s been trying not to think about it, personally. “Nothing to be done now.”

“I shouldn't have asked you.”

“I could have said no.”

“Why didn’t you?” Nicole struggles for an answer and Wynonna lights another cigarette. When she offers it again Nicole takes it, inhales, immediately coughing. It’s hot, and it burns, and it’s gross, and Wynonna takes it from her fingers while she’s regretting all her decisions. “Sorry,” Wynonna says, and Nicole’s not sure which thing she’s talking about.

“It’s okay,” she says finally, and they sit up all night to watch the sunrise.

Chapter Text

Wynonna is with Dolls, and Nicole takes Waverly by the hand, still marveling that it’s allowed, that she can brush a thumb across Waverly’s knuckles and shiver when Waverly leans her head on Nicole’s shoulder. They go to the movies and Waverly wants to sit in the front row, because she doesn’t know that it’s a terrible idea that will result in cricked necks and squinty eyes, and Nicole tugs her up the dark stairs to the very back. “It’s a muggle tradition,” she murmurs, when Waverly makes a quiet noise of complaint, and she tucks them into the far corner, away from everyone else.

Nicole waits through the previews, listening to Waverly’s soft comments on which ones she wants to see, and waits fifteen minutes into the film, some boring horror thing that’s been out for a few weeks. Nicole picked it because she’s nothing if not a sucker for the cliche of a pretty girl burrowing against her side against the scary music and the cheap rubber monster, and because it means the theater is mostly empty. She noses against Waverly’s jawline, nips at Waverly’s earlobe, and slides closer for a kiss. She pulls away after just a few seconds, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” Waverly says, absentminded, “thanks.”

Nicole gapes. She goes in again, a careful kiss to just under Waverly’s ear, sucking a small dark bruise to the soft skin of Waverly’s neck, where Waverly can cover it with her hair but Nicole can know it’s there. She hums around the hickey, licking at the imprint of her teeth, and Waverly makes a quiet noise, patting her on the head. She pulls back. “Waves?”

“Look,” Waverly says, eyes fixed on the screen, “she’s going into the basement! Why would she do that?”

“Because she’s in a horror movie.” Nicole leans in and Waverly pulls away, a frown creasing her face.

“She’s alone!”

Nicole sighs, slumping back in her seat, and cracks open the box of candy.

“The ending was stupid,” Waverly declares, as the last shot fades away. She pushes up the armrest and climbs into Nicole’s lap, straddling her. “How long are the end credits on a muggle movie?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole says, because every single fact she’s ever learned has left her brain in a rush. Waverly dips her head and Nicole strains upward, and they make out, smiling and giggling and wandering hands, until a teenager in a visor and a polo shirt coughs loudly from the aisle, wearing a nametag and holding a broom.

//

Wynonna and Nicole go out into the patch of woods behind the homestead and throw Sectumsempras at the tree trunk of a small sapling until it topples, and float it back to the house beside them. They wedge it against a wall and Waverly makes popcorn on the stove and they string it with a needle and twine, the muggle old fashioned way, before winding it around the sparse branches.

Wynonna hefts a tealight candle in her palm, thoughtful. “No,” Nicole says, firm, and she sighs.

“Fine. Killjoy.”

“Fire hazard.” Wynonna leaves to get the good whiskey out of the barn and Nicole leans up against Waverly in the kitchen making eggnog, stealing kisses until she hears Wynonna’s feet thump on the porch, returning.

Wynonna makes the eggnog too strong and they all drink too much and Nicole tries to explain the plot of It’s A Wonderful Life, and after Wynonna staggers off to her room Nicole crawls on top of Waverly on the couch and kisses her until her lips are chapped, stretched into a smile she can’t shake. Waverly drags her onto the porch and tells her everything she’s been learning in Astronomy, stars and planets and magic in the cadence of her voice and the way she moves.

//

Nicole Apparates to Diagon Alley with Wynonna and wanders the shops, frowning. She’s already got an expensive bottle of bourbon with a red ribbon around the neck and a box of irresponsibly dark chocolate stashed under her bed for Wynonna, and she’d mailed a nice wool coat and a cashmere scarf home for her mother and her sister, but she’s got nothing going for Waverly. She ducks into Knockturn Alley, her hood over her face and her fingers tight around her wand, and picks up a few things she needs for her experiments, her heart beating fast until she’s back on the well-lit main street of Diagon Alley.

She finds Wynonna in a joke shop. “Nothing you’re buying here better have my name on it.”

Wynonna snorts. “As if. No, I’m already planning my senior prank.”

“Seriously, Wynonna? People are trying to kill you.”

“As far as we know, it’s ‘person.’” Nicole makes a disapproving noise. “Oh come on, what are you, a Prefect? It’s my last year, no one thought I’d ever graduate, and I want to fuck with someone.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you back at the house, okay?”

Nicole bites the bullet and buys Waverly new potions equipment, the highest quality she can afford, and a few vials of ingredients she thinks Waverly might be low on. She wraps it sitting on her bed at Earp Manor, her tongue between her teeth and she makes the creases sharp and the ribbon curled, and tucks everything below the tree. There’s already a handful of packages there, and Nicole picks up the one with her name on it, bringing to her ear and shaking gently.

“No cheating,” Waverly says from the doorway, teasing, and Nicole heaves a big put upon sigh before shuffling off to the barn for a few hours of work before Wynonna shows up with dinner.

//

Christmas dawns frosty, a fresh snowfall blanketing the yard and dusting the trees, and Waverly wakes them all up early and plies them with coffee and whining to get them out of bed.

Wynonna cracks her gift from Nicole open and gets down a long swig before Nicole confiscates it and Waverly floats it to the top of the fridge. Wynonna had given Waverly a set of books, bound in leather, and Waverly cracks them open, gentle on the binding, and breathes them in, smiling. “Smell,” she insists, and Nicole bends over, obliging, and inhales: paper and ink and glue and leather, and she smiles, besotted, while Waverly flips through the set, squealing in joy.

Wynonna rips open her gift from Waverly, which turns out to be the exact same bottle Nicole had got her, and she walks it in kitchen, ostensibly to put it away but more likely to spike her coffee, and Nicole sneaks a quick kiss. “Great minds think alike,” she says, and rubs a finger over where Waverly has layered concealer to hide the hickey under her jaw.

Waverly swats at her, then presses a present in her hands, wrapped in bright green festive paper. “For you.”

Nicole rips it open, eager, discarding the wrapping paper to the side. “Oh,” she says, frozen in surprise.

“Do you like it? Wait, don’t answer. Open Wynonna’s, they go together.”

Nicole opens the other gift, and holds the objects in her lap. “Wow,” she says, pasting a look on her face that she hopes conveys surprised gratitude. “I… love them.”

Waverly bounces. “We went to the muggle shops. It was confusing, but we finally found a few things that they talked about in Muggle Studies. I thought you could take them back to Hogwarts, use them for schoolwork.”

Nicole places the stapler aside, on top of her brand new three hole punch. “I have the best girlfriend,” she whispers as Wynonna comes back and flops onto the floor beside them. “Thanks,” she says to Wynonna.

Wynonna grunts. “You like them?” Her voice is brash but it undercuts with nerves, and Nicole is completely genuine when she says it’s one of the best Christmases she’s ever had.

//

Nicole remembers going back to Hogwarts for her second year, after the summer holidays, and how sliding into her friendship with Wynonna felt right, sitting on the grass in front of the lake with Wynonna, the last summer breeze ruffling their cloaks, and meeting her little sister for the first time; she knew that felt more like home than her childhood bedroom would ever feel again.

The second she steps into the castle this time, ignoring the sidelong glances from the other students, the whispers start up around her about why they were suspended. She waits all day for the feeling to hit her again, unpacking quickly, picking up her new schedule, taking a quick flight around the grounds, but she doesn’t feel it. She’s frowning at dinner.

“Hey.” Waverly slips onto the bench beside her. “You didn’t come over to the Gryffindor table. Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Nicole mutters. She pokes at her food, disinterested, and sighs. Waverly takes her hand, under the table, and despite herself Nicole feels a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “I’m okay,” she assures Waverly, and after a quick look around, brings Waverly’s hand to her mouth, dropping a kiss to the center of her palm.

Waverly smiles. “Wynonna wants to talk to you later.” She bounces a little. “The Quidditch team is letting me try out, can you believe it? Just to practice with them, since we’re banned from the team until next year.”

“You’re going to do great,” Nicole promises. “You want me to help you train?”

“No,” Waverly says, “I should suck up to the girls already on the squad. Plus I want you to keep an eye on Wynonna for me while I’m busy at practices.”

“I promise,” Nicole agrees, and gets up, purposefully clumsy, brushing her lips across Waverly’s neck under the guise of a stumble. Waverly pinks, painfully adorable, and Nicole’s heart beats quick.

//

“Did you know about this?”

“No,” Nicole says, admiring, “but I am not surprised.”

“Huh.” Wynonna sprawls out next to her on the bleacher seating, her eyes fixed on Waverly zooming around the pitch, wielding her bat with deadly accuracy. “I thought she’d be a chaser.”

“Mm.”

“Are you--” Wynonna squints at her “what’s wrong with you?”

Nicole snaps back to attention. “Nothing. Nothing, I’m just… very into Quidditch. Appreciate the game.” Waverly hits a bludger just right and whoops, triumphant. “What a beautiful game.”

“No way they won’t let her play,” Wynonna says, proud. “While she’s at practice we can… you know.”

“Good,” Nicole says. “I need your help with my project anyway.”

“Excellent,” Wynonna says, hopping up. Nicole drags her eyes away from Waverly, questioning. “I’ve got just the place.”

//

“When you said you had a place in mind, I thought you meant the Room of Requirement.”

Wynonna flops against a tree, grimacing as a rock digs into her ass. “They’re onto us,” she says, overdramatic, and Nicole rolls her eyes. “So what’s up?”

Nicole crouches, her bag of holding in front of her. She pulls out her project, careful. “I need help testing.”

Wynonna squints. “That’s a weird looking cloak.”

“Don’t be thick,” Nicole says, and straps the vest on, smoothing the strong velcro. “It’s a muggle thing. I’ve been working on adjusting it for the wizarding world.” She touches her wand to her chest, square in the middle of the vest, and murmurs an incantation, activating the charms she’s been layering on it for weeks. It glows blue, rippling, then fades back to dark blue.

“You need me to throw spells at you? Hell yeah.” Wynonna stands, raising her wand, then hesitates, frowning. “Couldn’t we just prop it against a tree or something?”

“That was phase one. This is phase two.”

“What’s phase three?”

Nicole shrugs, widening her stance and squaring her shoulders. “Combat, I guess.”

“Okay,” Wynonna says. She frowns. “You’re sure?”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Shut up and hex me, Earp.”

“Locomotor Wibbly!”

//

“I think that went well,” Wynonna muses, staggering out of the Forbidden Forest with Nicole’s weight heavy on her shoulder. Nicole groans, her legs twitching uncontrollably.

“I’ll make some more adjustments,” she pants, “just get me to bed.”

“If I had a nickel,” Wynonna says, cheeky, and Nicole wishes she had enough feeling in her legs to kick Wynonna in the shins.

//

“I saw you,” Waverly pants, Nicole licking a wet stripe from her neck to her ear, “and Wynonna, when I was at practice.”

“Mm,” Nicole hums. She nips the side of Waverly’s jaw and coaxes her into a kiss, messy and wet and too much teeth. Waverly moans, soft, and Nicole’s stomach jumps. She tightens her grip on Waverly’s waist, pushing her against the wall of the Prefect’s bathroom. Her fingers bump cool tile and Waverly shivers, urging her hands under Nicole shirt, her nails dragging. Waverly pushes her back six inches and Nicole pouts.

“I’m trying to be serious,” Waverly says, but her voice is low and she touches Nicole’s lips, kiss-swollen. “What were you guys doing in the Forbidden Forest?”

“Detective Earp,” Nicole teases, snagging Waverly’s index finger with her teeth and sucking it into her mouth, her lips closing around the digit in a promise. Waverly flicks her in the nose. “Just training,” Nicole says. “Is the interrogation over now? We only have five more minutes, max.”

“Tell me what you were doing,” Waverly says, and it’s soft because she’s smiling and leaning in to taste the hollow of Nicole’s throat, but Nicole topples forward, the words tripping off her tongue.

“I’m working on protection charms, like armor. For combat. Wynonna’s helping me test them.” She blinks rapidly, frowning, but forgets her worry when Waverly nips at her throat.

“And you’re being careful?”

“Yes,” Nicole murmurs, tugging her up for a proper kiss. Waverly breaks it after only a minute, and Nicole sighs, licking her lips.

“Remind me to send Dolls a thank you present,” Waverly says, absent, then pulls at Nicole’s braid, releasing it. “Kiss me, Haught,” she orders, and Nicole feels a jerk in her belly. She crashes into Waverly’s lips, awkward and too hard, and pulls back immediately, blinking. She steps away and Waverly drops her hands from Nicole’s waist, frowning. “Nicole?”

“I, uh,” Nicole sits down on the floor, hard, her head swimming.

“Nicole!” Waverly drops into a crouch in front of her, her face creased in worry.

Nicole shakes her head, clearing her vision. “Huh. I just got dizzy for a second.” She grins at Waverly, tucking loose piece of hair behind Waverly’s ear. “Must be because I’ve got the prettiest girlfriend in the world.”

Waverly rolls her eyes and pulls Nicole to her feet. “Or because you and Wynonna are overdoing it playing Dumbledore’s Army in the woods when you should be studying.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s because I’ve got Waverly Earp on the brain. And on the lips.”

Waverly groans at the bad joke but she’s smiling, and there’s still two minutes left before they have to leave, and she doesn’t feel like she belongs in her parents house anymore and Hogwarts may not feel like home anymore, but Waverly’s smile against hers is the sweetest place Nicole’s ever been, and she never wants to leave.

//

“This makes me feel a feeling,” Wynonna says, her mouth hanging open.

“Yup,” Nicole agrees, although she’s pretty sure watching Waverly Earp on a broom slamming the bludgers into the targets with unnerving accuracy is inspiring less sisterly feelings within herself.

“I really thought she’d be a chaser,” Wynonna mutters, flopping back on the stadium seating.

Nicole stays leaning on the railing, and with Wynonna behind her she can let her mouth go slack and her eyes glaze over, watching Waverly’s arms flex as she wings the bat, the determined look on her face, her thighs around the broomstick. “She’s good,” she says, because it’s true. She tosses Wynonna a little smirk. “I guess you really are sisters.”

“We Earps are gifted at acts of physical aggression,” Wynonna agrees. She sighs. “She should be on the team for real, not benched because of my stupid ass.”

“Yeah. How dare you be attacked and kidnapped against your will. You bitch.”

“I’m trying to wallow here, do you mind?”

Nicole sits next to her, tucking her cloak around her face and stretching her legs out. “Sorry. Carry on.”

“No,” Wynonna says, tossing her hair so it hits Nicole in the face. “You’ve ruined it.”

//

“Shit,” Wynonna says, bending over her, worried. “You okay?”

Nicole groans. There’s dirt in her mouth. Her left arm is numb. “Wha?”

“You flew backwards. It was cool, until you hit the tree.” Wynonna runs searching fingers over her scalp and Nicole winces. “Shit, you’re bleeding. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“You were supposed to cast a bat bogey hex,” Nicole snaps, the pain making her irritable. She flips Wynonna the bird. “How many fucking fingers am I holding up.”

“You’re fine,” Wynonna diagnoses. She taps her wand against the back of Nicole’s head, murmuring, and the pain eases sharply. “I thought you were ready for the big leagues.”

“You blasted me into a tree.”

“Yeah, I may have jumped the plot ahead too much. Try again tomorrow?”

Nicole groans again, shoving herself to her feet. “Yeah. I need to redo the charms before we try another impact spell. Try a last hex before we go back?”

Wynonna frowns. “You sure? You got hit pretty hard there.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t my fault, crankypants.” Wynonna takes a few steps back, then cuts her wand through the air, sharp. “Confundus!”

Nicole feels the spell hit her, a faint thump against her chest, and the vest glows purple at the point of impact, rolling outwards like a stone hitting a puddle. She rocks back a step. She’s unbearably dizzy, and she can see Wynonna raising her wand again. “Expelliarmus.” Wynonna’s wand shoots out of her hand, rebounding off a tree.

“Hey,” Wynonna says, “cool. It worked!”

“Not well enough,” Nicole says, stripping out of the vest and packing it away while Wynonna retrieves her wand. “I shouldn't feel any effects at all.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m surrounded by overachievers.” Wynonna slings an arm around her shoulder, companionable. “Your head okay?”

“Hurts,” Nicole admits. “Another week before you surprise me like that again, okay?”

Wynonna checks her watch. “We’re done early tonight. Wanna go scoop Waverly from practice, hit up the kitchens? I could murder some pancakes.”

//

By the time they’re seated in the Gryffindor common room, Wynonna eating pancakes with her hands like cookies, Nicole’s headache is a persistent thump in her temples. “You okay?” Waverly murmurs, when Wynonna goes to get her pack of cards for Exploding Snap. “You keep wincing.”

“A headache,” Nicole admits, and purrs when Waverly rubs a gentle knuckle against the side of her head. Wynonna returns and Waverly pulls away. Nicole whines, and Waverly pats her thigh. Nicole watches them play with half her attention, her eyelids drifting shut; she can’t quite fall into a doze, her head throbbing.

“Nicole,” Waverly says, and it sounds like she’s been saying it for a while. “You should go to bed.”

“I’m okay.”

“Go to bed,” Waverly says firmly, and Nicole stands like she’s been jerked up by marionette strings. Waverly blinks, expecting more of an argument. “Nicole?”

“I’m going to bed,” Nicole says, the words tripping off her tongue. She walks straight out of the Gryffindor common room to her own, up the winding stairs, her feet not stopping until she’s in her dorm, flopping onto the mattress without taking off her cloak or her shoes, and falls asleep almost immediately, with a sigh.

//

“I know everyone kept saying you’re a genius,” Wynonna says, throwing three hexes in a row, “but damn, Haught. You’re a fucking genius.”

“I didn’t make up a lot of it. It’s just time and effort. Some Aurors have similar spells on their cloaks. What’s that, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Wynonna says, tossing a jelly legs at her with a bored flick of her wand. “Seventeen. This is boring, can I blast you again tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Nicole agrees, but another jet of light hits her and she yelps, toppling.

Wynonna’s face swims into view, and Nicole realizes she’s flat on her back again. “Looks like eighteen’s the limit,” Wynonna says, and offers her a hand.

“I like your hair,” Nicole mumbles. “Earp hair is… the best hair.”

“That’s the Anakatus talking,” Wynonna says, dragging her to her feet and patting her on the shoulder. “It should fade pretty quick.”

“Pretty,” Nicole says dreamily. “Where… Waves?”

“At practice,” Wynonna says, side-eyeing her. “You know that.”

“She’s really pretty,” Nicole says, sighing. Wynonna snaps her fingers in front of her face.

“That’s enough of that,” she says, tugging the vest off and slinging Nicole’s bag over her shoulder. She nudges Nicole in the small of the back. “Let’s go.”

Nicole lays on her back on the side of the pitch, babbling to herself. Every so often Wynonna makes her drink some water, her frown deepening. “Waverly’s going to kill me,” she says, sighing, when practice ends and Nicole is still cloudwatching, muttering about the moon being made of cheese. “The effects should have faded already.”

Nicole doesn’t answer in favor of humming the entire theme song to Bonanza, her father’s favorite show. On the second round, Waverly is peering at her, and she can hear Wynonna explaining during the third. By the time she’s gone through it four times, Waverly is standing over her, arms crossed. “You broke her,” she accuses Wynonna.

“She said some hexes might react weirdly to the charms on the vest. This isn’t my fault! It was just a little Anakatus.”

“Sure,” Waverly says, “and nothing before that, huh? Nothing that might have stuck to her charms and rebounded when you finally broke through. It’s not like you guys aren’t rank amateurs playing in the forest like first years.”

“Hi,” Nicole says. She smiles.

“Not this again,” Wynonna mutters. She pokes Nicole in the shoulder with her wand. “I heard about you getting your high on while I was gone. No molesting my sister this time around.”

“Too late,” Nicole says, smiling at Waverly’s hair, her smile, her blush. “That ship is loooong gone.”

“What?”

//

“So,” Waverly says at breakfast, “that wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I thought it would be.”

“Sorry,” Nicole repeats, glum. “I didn’t mean to--I would never try to take that away from you, telling Wynonna.”

“It’s okay,” Waverly says, “it’s not like I wanted to keep you a secret.”

Nicole stabs a piece of fruit with her fork, moody. “Still.”

“Hey,” Waverly says, and when Nicole turns she kisses her, brief and obvious. When she pulls away Nicole is gaping.

“There was food in my mouth.”

“Yeah, that was kinda gross.” Waverly wipes at Nicole’s mouth with a napkin.

Nicole walks her to Potions, their hands linked, and kisses her once before Waverly bounces away, and when people stare, shocked, she smirks, her spine straight, and swaggers her way to Herbology.

//

“I found it,” Wynonna crows, holding a book aloft.

“You really should have made your way to the Library sooner,” Nicole says, and Wynonna punches her shoulder.

“Fuck you. Don’t you know what this is?”

“A book,” Nicole says, exaggerated surprise.

“I liked you better when you weren’t fucking my sister,” Wynonna says, watching her reaction closely, and when Nicole chokes she smiles. “Good. And don’t do it anytime soon, either.” She thumps the book against Nicole’s chest. “This is the complete record of the best pranks ever pulled on campus.”

Nicole flips it open, paging through quickly. “Wow. What a myriad history of hilarity.” She flips it around to show Wynonna the completely blank pages.

“It’s enchanted, asshole. We just have to figure out the right incantation. Tonight you’re working right, no testing?”

“Yeah,” Nicole agrees, settling down for a long session of concentrated spellwork.

Three hours later she yawns, standing up for a stretch that makes her bones crack, satisfying. “Any luck?”

“No,” Wynonna says, sighing. “Waverly will know what to do---hold up.” She smacks herself in the forehead. “I’m a moron.” She flips the book to the first page, one hand holding the cover open, and taps her wand against the book. “I solemnly swear I am up to no good,” she murmurs, then whoops in victory when curved lettering swirls it’s way across the page. “Should have gone for the classics first,” she says to Nicole, smug.

Nicole sits next to her. “What does it say?” They peer at the page, lit by Nicole’s hurried Lumos.

“Flipped the quidditch pitch upside down,” Wynonna reads.

“I knew about that,” Nicole says, “they played the House final match anyway. Total shitshow.”

“Charmed the Astronomy tower stairs to loop forever.”

“No way,” Nicole vetoes swiftly, “I’m taking Astronomy, don’t do that to me.”

“I’m not going to repeat the pranks. It has to be original. Oh look at this one: floated Groundskeeper’s Hut to the middle of the lake and the squid moved in.”

“Did you decide who you want to target?”

Wynonna’s eyes narrow. “Oh yeah. The Stone Bitch.”

“You don’t even take classes with Professor Clootie.” Nicole packs up her supplies, automatic and neatly tucking them away.

“We have other scores that need to be settled. And Doc hates her, so he’ll help.”

“He’d help you anyway,” Nicole mutters, and then tries to look innocent when Wynonna shoots her a glare.

//

Nicole wraps the Gryffindor scarf around her neck at breakfast, and it’s worth the dirty glares from her own house when Waverly walks on the pitch, the nerves showing on her face, and sees Wynonna and Nicole, decked out in her colors and their faces painted, screaming themselves hoarse.

Gryffindor beats Hufflepuff by a landslide and they pour onto the pitch, whooping, and Nicole spins Waverly in her arms, grinning. “I knew they’d play you,” Nicole says, gleeful. “You were amazing.”

“Shut up,” Waverly says, and kisses her before her teammates swoop her up on their shoulders and carry her away.

//

Champ corners her after Charms. “You’re disgusting,” he hisses, and Nicole rolls her eyes.

“Get over yourself,” she snaps, shouldering past him hard.

“You stole my girl,” he calls, and when she turns, his wand is raised in her direction, his stance set.

“Waverly doesn’t belong to anyone,” Nicole says, her fury making her blind to the crowd starting to gather, the whispers humming. “She makes her own decisions.” She smiles, smug. “And she chose me.”

“Dyke,” he spits, genuinely hurt, his face pinched, and whatever lingering sympathy Nicole had for him--for his many, many faults, he did seem to care about Waverly, even if she found his way of showing it sorely lacking--disappears under the weight of her anger.

“Champ!” Waverly comes around the corner, furious, and his wand jerks in her direction. Nicole feels a yank in her chest, burning and sharply painful, and dizziness swamps her. She falls against the wall, bracing herself and trying to breathe, and Waverly erects a shield just as the light of a hex flashes against it.

Nicole shouts, furious, and flicks her wrist--

//

“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” the Headmistress says, dripping disapproval, and Nicole tries to look contrite, even though she is, in fact, incredibly pleased with herself, even if her teeth ache, shrinking under Madame Pomfrey’s careful spellwork.

Champ groans on the bed across the aisle, and Nicole shoots a look at him, the boils on his legs, the purple splotches across his face, the black ring around his eye where her fist struck him. She flexes her sore knuckles and smirks.

//

“You’re an idiot,” Waverly huffs. Wynonna raises her hand for a high five and Nicole moves to reciprocate. “Do not,” Waverly says, and Nicole’s hand falls so quickly to her side she hits her thigh.

“Whipped,” Wynonna sings, and Waverly smiles, but Nicole looks down at her hand, frowning.

//

“I was surprised to hear from you,” Dolls says. “Everything okay?” His head bobs in the green flames, his expression faintly suspicious.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Nicole says, throwing up a shield around herself and the fireplace and muffling their conversation. “I need tell you something, and I don’t need your judgment, just your help.”

//

“There’s a quidditch game tomorrow,” Waverly says. “Slytherin and Hufflepuff.”

Nicole looks at her, confused. “Yeah. I know. Everyone knows.”

“I’m trying to ask you out on a date.”

Nicole is even more confused. “But we’re already dating.”

“You’re making this more difficult than it has to be,” Waverly huffs, and Nicole grins, reeling her in for a quick kiss.

“Nothing would make me happier than going on a date with you, Waverly Earp.”

Waverly pinks, ducking back in for a second kiss. “You charmer. Meet me in the Room of Requirement. Now go to Charms and wow them with your excellence.”

Nicole raises her hand for every question the professor asks. She sits on it halfway through the lesson, but it keeps going up. She has to stay behind to nod mechanically to the professor’s gushing pleasure at her sudden and abruptly enthusiastic participation.

//

Nicole walks into the Room of Requirement and actually stops in her tracks. Waverly’s in a dress, aqua ruffles flaring out into a mermaid cut at her feet, her hair up in an elegant twist.

“Uh,” she says, the only word honestly left in her vocabulary. She looks down at herself, her usual uniform, her socks mismatched, and finds another. “Shit.” There’s a wardrobe against the wall and she trips her way over to it, ducking behind the changing screen and hauling the door open. An array of dresses meet her eye and she sighs, relieved. She taps the wall with a palm. “Thanks,” she murmurs to the room, and is grateful she’d elected to curl her hair instead of braiding it up.

“I got food,” Waverly calls over to her while she hops on one foot, shucking her clothes and slipping a dress off a hanger. “And butterbeer.”

Nicole steps out from behind the screen, standing on one foot and then the other as she slips into strappy heels. “Did I tell you that you look beautiful yet?”

Waverly grins. “Nope.”

Nicole kisses her, light and joyous. “You’re a vision,” she says against Waverly’s lips, and Waverly kisses her again.

“Not so bad yourself.” They part after another long moment, Nicole’s smile wider than it’s ever been. She looks at the table, the lit candles, the fancy cutlery, and she’s turning around to make a smart comment when she chokes on her own spit, because there’s a bed in the corner, king sized, covered in soft looking sheets and fluffy pillows. Waverly follows her gaze and flushes bright red. “We uh, we don’t have to,” she stutters. “It’s just--you know. The room reads your mind.”

“Reads your mind,” Nicole repeats, slightly numb. Waverly gets even redder.

“Shut up,” she mutters. “Have you seen yourself? Haughtass indeed.”

Nicole snorts. She links their fingers together and tugs Waverly towards the table. “Let’s eat.”

//

Waverly is beautiful in candlelight, and beautiful with her hair mussed, and beautiful with her lipstick smeared and her dress tugging too low. “Are you sure?” Nicole asks, her fingers hesitant on Waverly’s zipper. “We don’t have to--”

“I’m sure if you’re sure.” Waverly steps out of her dress and Nicole checks out of reality for a second, staring. She jerks her eyes back to Waverly’s face to see her grinning. She wiggles to get her own dress off and Waverly stills her, a hand loose around her wrist. “I know--Kylie--” she practically spits the name “--wasn’t.” She sighs. “This won’t change how I feel about you. We can just kiss. There’s dessert around here somewhere.”

Nicole lowers her to the bed, settling between her legs on her hips, and they kiss until Nicole’s lips are too dry and her heart is both thundering and still.

“Are you sure,” Waverly keeps asking, while she undoes Nicole’s bra, slips her underwear down her long legs, and Nicole asks it back, her fingers walking slow down Waverly’s stomach and her body sliding down until she’s resting her cheek against Waverly’s inner thigh and just before she slips two fingers into her drenched, burning center, is this okay, can I? back and forth like a soft echo and they breathe out yes, please, yeah until it wraps around them, moans and sighs and urging in the twitch of their muscles and the clench of their bodies.

//

“You know,” Waverly says, when they’re sprawled out on top of the covers and their breathing has settled, the sweat drying on their bodies. “People think you and Wynonna are dating?”

Nicole drags a lazy finger up the curve of Waverly’s arm. “Who?”

“The girls from your year.”

“Mm. I think it’s because my roommates caught me and Wynonna in bed once,” Nicole says, drowsy and not thinking it through.

Waverly pulls away slightly. “What?”

“Not like that,” Nicole says, fumbling to pull her in again. “Just sleeping. We were twelve, babe. They woke us up.”

“Huh.”

“And then I punched them.”

Waverly snorts. “No wonder Wynonna likes you.”

Nicole nuzzles into Waverly’s shoulder, sighing. “How long do we have?”

“Until curfew,” Waverly admits, faint triumph in her voice. “It took a little convincing, but it turns out the Room approves of us.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Nicole says, because she’s still muggleborn at heart, and sentient rooms that are rooting for her sex life is a bit much. But Waverly’s tucked against her, warm and sated, and Nicole can feel the scratchmarks on her back and the faint ache in her thighs and she just sighs again, settling.

//

“Nicole,” Waverly whispers. “Hey. Come on.” Nicole sits up, the blanket falling away from her naked torso, and shivers.

“Shit, what time is it?”

“Late. I lost track of things. Wynonna’s gonna flip, I gotta get back to the common room. And we’re going to have dodge the patrols.”

Nicole shifts out of bed quickly, fumbling for her pants, her underwear. “Shame to leave that dress,” she muses, casting a sly look back at Waverly, who’s pulling a sweater over her head.

“Perv,” Waverly says, playful, and they kiss before sitting side by side to tie their shoes.

//

“I thought you knew where the patrols would be,” Waverly hisses, both of them tucked behind a wall length tapestry.

“I do,” Nicole whispers. “Clootie never follows the mapped route.”

“She’s coming this way,” Waverly says, slightly panicked. She yanks at Nicole’s elbow and they shuffle sideways. Waverly squeaks, her grip tightening hard enough Nicole has to bite back a yelp, and they tumble backwards. The stone in front of them rumbles, closing the hallway off from view.

“What?” Nicole stands up, dusting herself off, and helps Waverly to her feet. “What happened? Where are we?”

“Secret passage. Lumos.” Waverly’s light shows a narrow passage, encased in stone. “We should follow it.”

“What? No. What if it leads off the castle grounds?” Nicole lights her own wand up with a murmur and examines where they’d fallen in, looking for a release or a catch. She mutters a few charms, tries a few different wand movements. She comes up empty, and sighs deeply. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Waverly starts to move and Nicole stops her. She squeezes past Waverly to go first and ignores Waverly’s eyeroll. They shuffle along, and after a hundred feet it starts to feel oppressive, the walls too tight, the chill biting at her through her cloak. She reaches her free hand back and Waverly takes it, holding tight. Their feet sound too loud on the stone floor, their steps echoing ominously, their breath fogging out cloudy and harsh.

It’s almost ten minutes before they hear something else ahead of them. It sounds like a slide across the floor, a scraping against the wall. Waverly’s grip on her hand grows painful, but Nicole thinks she must be squeezing back just as hard. The passage finally ends, breaking into a large room, the wall curved, and even when Nicole murmurs a quick word to boost the radius of her light it isn’t enough to show the whole room.

“Shit,” she mutters, and puts her back against the wall. Waverly’s shoulder braces against hers and they start to inch their way around the room, pressed against the wall. Something moves in the darkness and Nicole pulls Waverly slightly behind her. Footsteps echo, just beyond where her light falls, and Nicole sets her shoulders for a fight.

Wynonna strides into the light, her face set, and Nicole heaves a sigh of relief. “Christ,” he says, her wand dropping slightly. “You scared the shit out of us.”

“You,” Wynonna snaps at Waverly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Nicole bristles, but Waverly gets there first. “Calm down, Wynonna. We got stuck in the Room of Requirement, and then we fell through--”

“Useless,” Wynonna spits, advancing, “I always knew Daddy was right about you.”

Waverly grabs Nicole, yanking her back. “Don’t! I don’t think--”

“Killed the wrong sister,” Wynonna hisses, “should have been you.”

Nicole throws Waverly’s hand off her arm and strides forward. “What the fuck--” she starts, and then backs up until she smacks painfully against the wall, because Wynonna ripples, falling into a shapeless mass before reforming.

“I know what you did,” Not-Waverly whispers. “I know what you did.” Nicole’s wand clatters to the ground, her fingers numb. Not-Waverly’s in that pretty dress, the one that puddled around Nicole’s fingers when she slipped it off her, their mouths pressed together, but her eyes are swallowed up, completely black, her face twisted in hatred. “I’ll never love you, you’re nothing but a fag. I--”

“Riddikulus!”

The creature shrieks, shifting into caricatured makeup, a wig, a ridiculous outfit, before scurrying into the shadows. Nicole grabs her wand up and copies the incantation, throwing a series of Riddikulus into the dark and hoping one hits. Waverly’s hand is in hers again and they run, finding an opening and hurtling down into another corridor.

“Fuck,” Nicole mutters, and behind her Waverly echoes, fervent. A door appears before them, and they slide to a stop in front of it. The doorknob doesn’t turn under Nicole’s fingers, but Waverly’s two steps ahead, the Alohamora out of her mouth just as Nicole rattles the knob for the second time. It doesn’t work. Nicole throws a blasting curse, panicked, and blows the doorknob out through the other side of the door, clanging against the wall.

They spill out into a hallway, tripping over themselves, and Nicole kicks the door shut with her foot before she crashes to the ground. It rebounds open without the knob to keep it shut, but there’s nothing but silence on the other side, nothing chasing them. Nicole pants, sprawled out, Waverly’s elbow digging into her gut. “Shitkicker,” Waverly mutters, standing and checking on the state of her wand. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, getting up. “Never met a Boggart before.”

“Yeah,” Waverly says. She pauses, the silence heavy. “Do you want to talk about what it turned into?”

Nicole remembers Waverly’s face, the look of loathing directed at her, I’ll never love you. “Do you?”

“No,” Waverly admits. She fidgets. “We should go back to our rooms.”

Nicole hugs her, too hard, their arms in awkward positions. “We’re okay, though?”

“Yes,” Waverly assures her, running a reassuring hand down Nicole’s hair. “We’re okay.”

//

“So Doc’s down to get it into her goblet, I just need your help with the spellwork. You’re a huge nerd, almost as bad as Waves, and it turns out that does matter, sometimes.” Wynonna turns to her. “Are you even listening to me? You haven’t been doing anything except stare for half an hour. A giant spider walked by ten minutes ago and you didn’t even notice.”

“We should tell her,” Nicole says, chewing on her thumb. “I--we should tell her.”

Wynonna puts aside the trickster’s ledger. “Is this about the Boggart?” Nicole cuts a look to her, surprised, and she shrugs. “Sisters, man. Sorry, but I know a lot about you.” Nicole’s face freezes, horrified, and Wynonna winks. “Yeah. A lot.” She turns abruptly serious. “We had to talk, you know? It shook her up.”

“She told you about her fear?” Wynonna nods, swallowing hard.

“Is it--I should do a better job with her.” Wynonna sounds unbearably guilty, her eyes cast down, and they don’t hug much, the two of them, but Nicole clasps her shoulder, comforting, and Wynonna’s hand comes up to grip her forearm, anchoring.

“You do fine,” Nicole assures her. “And you can always do better.”

Wynonna nods, wiping hastily at her eyes. “We both will.” She coughs. “Anyway, we were talking about you. Waverly told me what it said to you.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Nicole mutters, “I’m over it.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s with the sudden burning guilt?”

Nicole chews at her thumb again, frowning. “I don’t know.”

“You owe me,” Wynonna presses. “Waverly’s been going out of her mind trying to figure it out. If I have to sit through another lecture on ‘internalized homophobia’--”

“I just don’t want to lie to her. It’s--she’s important to me. I’m serious about her.” Nicole meets Wynonna’s eyes and doesn’t look away. They stare each other down.

“Good,” Wynonna says finally, and Nicole lets out a breath, relieved. Wynonna groans. “She’s going to be so pissed.” Nicole sighs again, tension easing away, and with that settled, she shifts her focus.

“And I think we’re ready for phase three.”

“Combat?”

“No, that’s phase four now. Next time we’re doing phase three.”

“Set your phasers to stun,” Wynonna says, and then laughs at her own joke. “Hey,” she complains when Nicole’s eyes roll up to the sky. “That’s a muggle joke! I need positive reinforcement.”

//

Professor Clootie storms the Great Hall at lunch, bellowing, demanding the student responsible show themselves. In a wonderfully tragic twist of fate, Wynonna and Nicole happen to be in the library, so they learn about the reaction to the prank from Waverly in front of the lake, giggling over her dramatic reenactment of Clootie’s impending aneurysm, as every forkful of food turned to salt on her tongue. Waverly helps Wynonna inscribe her prank into the ledger for posterity and Wynonna trots away, triumphant, to hide it whenever she’d found it, her voice like a cat with the biggest bowl of cream: Mischief Managed.

Waverly and Nicole enjoy a long, lazy, extended makeout session, sprawled out over the grass and each other’s bodies. Nicole casts a few charms, blurring them out and blocking them from view, and Waverly comes straddling her, her eyes squeezed shut, the bright blue sky stretching out above them, endless.

//

“Okay,” Wynonna says. “Ready?”

Nicole braces herself. “Hit me.”

“Incendio.”

The vest sparks, and Nicole yelps when a glowing speck lands on her pant leg, igniting. “Shit!”

Wynonna snickers. “Feeling a little Haught?”

Nicole throws a jet of water out of her wand, snuffing out the small flame but leaving her leg wet and cold. She glares. “You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

“Hold on, one more: so Haught you’re on fire, amirite?” Wynonna snorts to herself, giggling.

“Are you done?”

“Yeah, fine. One more?”

“The big one,” Nicole agrees.

Wynonna raises her wand, then hesitates. “And you’re totally sure, right? Waverly will kill me if I mess up that pretty face.”

Nicole taps her chest. “Please don’t forget where you’re supposed to be aiming.”

“Waverly’s probably pretty fond of that area also.” Nicole rolls her eyes and Wynonna grins. “Alright, here we go. Sectumsempra.”

A red line flashes across Nicole’s chest, fading as quickly as it comes. “Come on,” Nicole says, “like you mean it.”

“Sectumsempra!”

Nicole rocks back a step, feels the pressure. “One more.”

“SECTUMSEMPRA!”

Nicole grunts, falling to one knee, the breath punched from her lungs. Wynonna’s hands land on her shoulder, concerned. “Nicole?”

“It’s okay,” Nicole says, and lets Wynonna drag her to her feet. “Fuck, I’m fine.” She grins, sudden and sharp. “I’m totally fine.”

“Damn,” Wynonna says, exhaling on a whistle. “If you aren’t just the smartest witch around.”

“When Waverly’s not in the vicinity.” Nicole unstraps the vest, running her fingers along the rough fabric, feeling the tingle of the charms. Her charms.

//

“Wynonna said you wanted to talk,” Waverly says, slipping in and leaning quietly against the wall of the baths. The door starts to open and she closes it with a casual wave of her wand. “Come back later, Tony,” she calls, and a voice grumbles before fading away.

Nicole is standing stock still, her heart thundering. Her palms are sweaty at her sides, and her stomach flips, over and over and over. “Yes,” she says, and lifts her chin. “I--we--” she decides to bite the bullet, and just say it, but as soon as she sucks in the breath for her words, her chest seizes. She staggers, falling, and tries to get her legs under her.

The next thing she knows she’s prone on the tiles, cool against her cheek, and Waverly’s hands are on her back, panicked. She groans, and Waverly turns her over. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, “what--?”

“You keeled over,” Waverly says, flashing a blinding light into one of Nicole’s eyes, then the other. Nicole swats at the painful brightness, uncharastically uncoordinated.

“I’m fine,” Nicole says automatically, and after a few seconds, she realizes it’s true. She feels completely fine. She sits up, Waverly moving away, and stands, shaking her legs out. “I’m okay.”

“What?” Waverly says, confused, she opens her mouth and Nicole kisses her, giddy.

“I really like you,” she says, smiling, and kisses her again.

Waverly’s eyes are bright, almost teary. “You almost passed out because you like me?”

“Really like,” Nicole emphasizes, cheesy, and when Waverly laughs they kiss again; joyous, loving, free.

//

“I can’t do this,” Wynonna says. “Are you crazy? This is crazy.”

“It’s fine,” Nicole insists, but her voice shakes despite herself.

“Can’t we--can’t we put a lizard inside it or something?”

“Wynonna, come on.” Nicole tries for a smile. “Whip it out and do me.”

“Crucio,” Wynonna mumbles, twitching her wand in Nicole’s direction.

“Really?”

Wynonna props her hands on her hips. “Oh sure, I’m the asshole. I could go to prison for this!”

“Not for that,” Nicole mutters, “that was pathetic.”

Wynonna’s eyes flash, challenged, and her voice is firmer, “Crucio.” Her wand sputters, a few red sparks dropping halfway between her and Nicole.

“You have to mean it,” Nicole reminds her. Wynonna grunts.

“I know, okay, Christ. Gimme a few practice tries. Crucio.” Her wand sparks again.

“I could make an erectile dysfunction joke, if it would help.”

“Pass.” Wynonna takes a deep breath. “Okay. Brace yourself, Haught.

“Hold on, I think your Earp-tile Dysfunc--”

“Crucio!”

Nicole watches the jet of light arc towards her, and she tenses, fighting off the flight instinct. The light touches her vest and she sucks in a breath, anticipating. Nothing happens. She pokes herself in the side. “It worked?”

“Why do you sound surprised? Were you not expecting it to work?”

Nicole shrugs. “I’m always optimistic, but uh, I wasn’t sure. Maybe you cast it wrong.”

“Fuck you, I cast it right.”

“Well do it again. And put some oomph in it.”

“Oomph,” Wynonna grumbles, setting her shoulders, “I’ll show you some oomph--”

Nicole wakes up in a puddle. “Umgh,” she groans, and sits up. Or, tries. Her fingers twitch, once.

“Take it easy.” Wynonna’s face swims into view, slightly out of focus, above her. “I was about to go get someone.”

Nicole groans again, her tongue too thick and dry in her mouth. She coughs, and licks enough moisture back into her mouth to speak, even if it is faintly slurred. “Wha’ happen?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Ow,” Nicole explains.

Wynonna smiles, looking relieved, although her face is still too white, pinched. “I thought I’d killed you for a second. You kinda, uh, flew a little. And you--” she swallows “--screamed.”

Nicole heaves herself up, and takes deep breaths to avoid vomiting. “So it… kind of worked?” Her muscles are sore, but she doesn’t remember pain, not really. Not like she figures she should.

“I don’t know if hurtling twenty feet backwards and passing out really counts as a successful field test.”

“Where’s my wand?” Wynonna hands it to her, and Nicole runs quick fingers up its length, checking for damage. “I’ll have to make some adjustments. We’ll try again.”

“Not today. You should eat something, and go be gross with Waverly, put some color in your cheeks.” Wynonna helps her stand and she wobbles. “And sleep. You need a nap.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, dreamy. “Waverly. Nap.” Wynonna snorts.

“God you two are disgusting.” She slings Nicole’s arm over her shoulder. “You are so fucking gay.”

//

Nicole isn’t sure there’s a better feeling than walking down the streets of Hogsmeade, her belly warm and pleasantly full, the bubbles from a fresh butterbeer fading on her tongue, the last winter’s breeze ruffling her hair, Waverly’s hand steady and soft in her own. Waverly tugs her into an alley, and silences her questioning look with a kiss, short and sweet, and Nicole presses her gently into the brick wall to lick into Waverly’s mouth, until she’s gasping and rolling under her fingers, tight on Waverly's hips.

There’s a boom in the distance, loud enough it shakes the ground, and Nicole pitches forward, her nose smacking against Waverly’s forehead. She groans, then goes tense. “What?”

Waverly pulls her close, tucking them behind a stack of crates. “There’s people,” she whispers, and her heart thunders, terrified. “Death Eater masks. I saw them swoop by. Do you think--?”

“Don’t know,” Nicole says, taking Waverly's hand and holding it tight. They stay pressed against the wall, making their way to the opposite side of the alley. “Either way, Hogwarts is the safest place.”

Waverly makes a noise of agreement. “The tunnel at the Three Broomsticks?”

“Yeah. Stay behind me.”

Waverly scoffs and stands firm at Nicole’s shoulder, her wand outstretched. “Only if you stay behind me.”

“I asked first,” Nicole says, and despite the sharp dip of nerves and clench of fear in her belly, she grins, fierce, and Waverly’s hand squeezes hers, anchoring.

They creep through the streets, the only movements other scared figures darting between doorways and ducking behind boxes. They detour twice, guiding their classmates into businesses that crack the door only long enough to admit frightened children before slamming firmly shut, the locks clicking. Nicole stuns a man in a black cloak skulking down another alley and Waverly ties him up, muttering under her breath while Nicole turns his mask over in her hands, thoughtful. The metal feels greasy in her hands, oily, and she shudders before casting it aside. “C’mon,” she mutters.

Waverly tugs on Nicole’s hand, pulling her into a crouch. “It’s just around the corner,” she whispers, and her eyes go unfocused for a moment. Fur sprouts across her neck, her ears going long and triangular. She inhales deeply, her fingers cracking, then settles back into just Waverly. “There’s three outside,” she says. “They must know about the secret passage.”

Nicole frowns. “They’re waiting? For us?”

“For me,” Wynonna says, popping into existence at Nicole’s left shoulder and slapping a hand over Waverly’s mouth before she can scream. Nicole’s heart leaps into her mouth and she has to take a deep breath before punching Wynonna in the arm.

“Asshole!”

“Don’t be mad at my excellent sense--” Wynonna pulls a face, drawing her hand away and wiping it on her jeans, pinching Waverly in retaliation-- “of dramatic timing.”

“We should Apparate away,” Waverly is saying, “we’ll worry about getting back to school grounds when things are less… murdery.”

“How did you even get here?” Nicole mutters, peering around the corner before Waverly hauls her back by the collar.

“The school heard right away. Teachers are on their way too, I think, I don’t know. I ran, Apparated as soon as I crossed the boundary. We should…” Wynonna trails off meaningfully and Nicole hesitates before nodding. They link hands and she reaches for Waverly, who pulls away, eyes faintly narrowed.

“What are you two up to?”

Someone steps around the corner, their mask glinting dully under the setting sun, and lifts their wand.

“Go now, yell at us later,” Wynonna yelps, and grabs Waverly by the wrist--

--they fall in a pile on the porch, Wynonna chanting urgently: “the wards, Haught, the wards--”

“I know, I know.” Nicole scrambles to her feet, flicking her wand and reaching for the little knot of her magic in her chest, the incantations falling easily from her lips after long practice. Twelve seconds had been her best; she makes it in ten this time, the adrenaline heavy and bitter on her tongue. She’s hardly finished with the last syllable before Wynonna’s hauling her and Waverly into the house.

“Here,” she says, shoving the vest at Nicole.

“Where’s the extra?”

“I didn’t have time,” Wynonna grunts, floating the sofa over to block the door. “Waves, get the windows.”

The windows have already been boarded up and layered with shields, but Waverly flicks her wand and shoves the bookcases against them. “You've been preparing for this,” she says, “we are going to have Words. If we survive.”

“We didn't want to bother you,” Nicole tries, weakly. Waverly throws her a withering glance and she shuffles her feet. “We’re very sorry.”

“You will be.”

“It was Nicole’s fault,” Wynonna says, shameless. Nicole glares. Waverly rolls her eyes. A chime rings out, low and humming along the floorboards. “Wards,” Wynonna mutters. “They’re here---how?”

“Could they have followed us?” Nicole asks, frowning, “how--”

“Let’s talk about it later,” Waverly says, her voice high and nervous. “Should we go upstairs?”

They cluster together in the middle of the room, their backs bumping. “No,” Nicole starts to explain, and is cut off by the sounds of shattering glass upstairs, then a series of small thumping explosions and muffled cursing, a male voice high pitched in pain.

“Booby trap,” Wynonna explains.

Waverly’s glare gets a little sharper. “You’ve been planning this for awhile. What if I’d gone upstairs?”

“You’d’ve been fine,” Wynonna says. “Can we talk about how smart your girlfriend is later? Some people are coming to kill us now.”

Waverly squeezes Nicole’s hand. They try to smile at each other. “Super smart,” Waverly says, quiet. Nicole’s breath is shaky in her lungs; her hands tremble.

The wall explodes to Nicole’s right, and she casts a shield without thinking, punched out of her chest, fatigue flaring as it glows bright blue, blinding, deflecting the debris away from them before flickering once and fading away. Two hooded, masked figures step through what used to be the living room wall, their boots crunching on wood and plaster, the pink insulation spilling onto the floor.

“Shit,” Wynonna squeaks, and they scatter, diving for upturned furniture as bright jets of light arc towards them. Nicole ends up behind an armchair, her hands over her head as dust settles like a cloud. She can see Wynonna ducked behind the sideways dining table; Waverly peeks out from the kitchen counter to throw three Stupefys in a row; they glance off what’s left of the wall, the sofa, the ceiling.

One of the figures turns towards her, wand raised, and Wynonna shouts; her curse hits him square in the chest and he slams backwards, turning once before going still, facedown, his wand rolling away. Nicole scurries during the confusion, sliding next to Wynonna just as a green flare whooshes over her so close she feels it ruffle her hair. “Fuck,” she pants.

“Just one left,” Wynonna says, trying to sound reassuring and not quite making the cut. “We can handle one.” A blasting curse takes out the counter, Waverly scrambling backwards, splinters leaving a long red scratch on her forehead. Wynonna throws a curse; the last Death Eater bats it aside and advances on Waverly, wand out; Wynonna cries out, panicked, and Nicole feels a jerk in her belly. Her wrist, where the wavering lines of the Vow had lain, years earlier, flares bright and she’s standing before she can think of a plan of action.

“Hey!” She throws a chunk of plaster at him, hitting him in the back, and he casts at the same time Waverly does, her incantation drowned out by his growling, booming shout.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Time slows. Nicole hears herself whisper Protego, even though she knows it won’t matter; she hears Waverly scream. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Wynonna diving for her, desperate, but she’s mostly watching the glowing stream of green light hit her, right above the heart, the vest flaring in a brilliant kaleidoscope of purple and yellow and blue. She’s never been shot, but she thinks this might be what it feels like, like she’s being impaled, an impossibly painful spear of pressure and agony. Her back hits the wall, her feet off the ground, and she sees the Death Eater fall prone before she slams into the floor, face first.

Wynonna grabs her by the shoulder, turning her, face pinched and panicked. She props Nicole’s head in her lap and Waverly is kneeling beside her, eyes wet. “Wav,” Nicole tries, her voice breaking. She can’t suck in any air, and her vision is narrowing.

“Nicole,” Waverly says, and she’s crying but she’s still so beautiful, the most beautiful girl Nicole’s ever seen, and her wrist hums, the Vow satisfied she’d done everything she could. If she has to die, it’s not a terrible last sight, Waverly with love across her face, her hand in Nicole’s, squeezing tight, her voice the last thing Nicole hears: I love you.

//

Nicole opens her eyes and can’t help feeling a little surprised about it. She groans when she tries to move and only manages a weak twitch, aches so deep she can feel it in her bones.

“Ms. Haught,” someone says. A light flashes in her eyes, blinding. “You’re very lucky to be alive.”

“Who are you,” Nicole tries to say. Her throat rasps, painful, and she croaks something garbled and incoherent.

“Don’t try to talk. I’m a healer; you’re in St. Mungo’s. Just rest, we’ll talk more in the morning.”

Nicole croaks again, and then sighs, letting the fatigue drag her under.

//

“Hey,” someone whispers, insistent. Nicole feels her shoulder get poked, soft and then harder, over and over. Nicole drags herself back into consciousness. Wynonna is peering at her. “I climbed through the window. Shit, you’re really alive.” Wynonna swoops at her, hugging tight, and Nicole grunts.

“Ow,” she groans, and realizes she’s got enough moisture in her mouth to talk, although she hardly recognizes her own voice, shredded and throaty. “Waves?”

“She’s okay. We’re under review from the school, but we’re okay.”

“Again?”

“Yeah.” Wynonna steps back, almost shuffling, awkward. “You know. Always trying to get rid of me. And you guys, now.”

Nicole licks at the roof of her mouth. “Why’re you bein’ weird?”

“Your face is weird,” Wynonna retorts, and shuffles again. “I don’t know, you almost died. Asshole.” She punches Nicole’s shoulder, feather light. “I gotta go before they catch me in here. Dolls is coming tomorrow to get you transferred to the Hogwarts Infirmary.”

//

They transport her in a car, Dolls pushing her wheelchair. Nicole’s limbs feel weak, floppy; dressing takes everything she’s got. “Waverly knows,” Dolls whispers in her ear as he helps her get into the car, and Nicole grimaces.

Waverly is also sitting in the backseat, and she might be pissed but she also pulls Nicole close, more of an embrace than a hug. “You’re okay,” she breathes, shaky; Nicole nods against her shoulder, her eyes stinging. “Dolls says you're a shoe-in for the Department of Mysteries. You’ve got their top researchers scratching their head over your vest.”

Nicole cradles Waverly’s face. “You’re okay, though?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says; they kiss, soft and relieved and reunited.

“Enjoy this ride,” Waverly says, as Nicole snuggles into her side and Wynonna makes fake retching noises from the other side of her. “Because I’m going to be so angry with you as soon as you’ve finished talking to the Aurors.”

//

Nicole wakes up in the middle of the night, still in the hospital wing, and her wand is in her hand before she realizes she’s conscious. “It’s me,” Waverly says from her bedside, quiet in the dark, and Nicole slips her wand back up her sleeve.

“I thought you were mad at me.”

“I am.” Waverly takes her hand, atop the thin mattress. “But I still care about you.”

“You love me.”

Waverly’s hand tightens. “You lied to me.”

Nicole wiggles upright, wanting to sit up but refusing to release Waverly’s hand. “Yeah. I did try to tell you, actually.” She picks at the sheets with her free hand. “I uh, can’t. Dolls says it’s another weird side effect.”

“I know.”

Nicole tries for a smile, weak. “You were always the smartest of us.”

“I went to Wynonna,” Waverly says slowly, “and I made her show me, in the Pensieve. I watched it.” Nicole remembers it almost dimly, kneeling on the dirty cobblestone, Wynonna’s hand around hers, the light twirling around them in thin, almost sinister tendrils. Yes, she’d said, over and over: do you vow to protect Waverly Earp? Even at the cost of your own life? For as long as you live?; yes, yes, yes.

“Oh,” is all she says.

“I just--why? You didn’t even know me then, not really.”

“The first time I met Wynonna someone called me a mudblood.” Waverly sucks in a gasp, horrified at just hearing it, but the word hardly matters to Nicole anymore. Sometimes she thinks it, when she beats a pureblood in a duel and they snarl, or she scores higher on a test, when her spellwork is better, when she’s a better flyer, when she’s faster on the draw. Yeah, she thinks at them, yeah. A mudblood did that. “She punched them.”

Waverly huffs out a half-laugh. “Of course she did.”

“We weren’t friends until later, not really. But she’s the first real friend I think I’ve ever had. And my second year, she pulls me aside, and she tells me about--you know--and she tells me about you. And she just goes on and on, how smart you are, how sweet. How you deserve the world.” Nicole turns Waverly’s hand palm up and traces her fingers. “I think I knew you before I ever even saw you. And she asks me to look out for you. She was convinced you’d be in Ravenclaw.”

“That's it?” Waverly asks, disbelieving. “That's why you snuck to Knockturn Alley when you were twelve and swore an Unbreakable Vow that could have killed you? Could still kill you?”

Nicole rolls a single shoulder in half shrug. “Then I met you. And I knew I would do it anyway. It didn’t seem to matter much.”

“Didn’t seem to--” Waverly sputters, “you idiot!”

Nicole frowns. “I’m injured, you know.”

“You,” Waverly snaps into the shadows, “idiot number two. Get out here.”

Wynonna shuffles out from behind a cabinet, looking vaguely guilty, and Nicole pins her with a glare. “Sorry,” she mutters. “It’s not like I’m going to leave you alone after you almost got iced. I wasn’t going to interrupt your…” she gestures, “... domestic.”

“Not only was it a terrible idea,” Waverly continues, “but you did it wrong.”

Wynona's face creases. “Wrong?”

“Nicole,” Waverly says, “touch your ear.”

Nicole pokes herself in the earlobe. “Why?” she asks, confused.

“Touch your nose.”

Nicole taps her index finger against the tip of her nose. “What’s happening?”

“I started to notice it ages ago,” Waverly says, sighing. “But it’s not a common side effect of the Vow, and it threw me off. That’s why I didn’t figure it out until you stepped in front of a curse for me.” She glowers at Nicole, reminded again.

Nicole shrugs. “I’d probably do anything you asked me to anyway.”

“What? Nicole, I could seriously hurt you. Aren’t you scared? At all?”

Nicole thinks about it. “Not really. I trust you.”

“Hey,” Wynonna says, “flick yourself in the forehead, Nicole.”

“Fuck off.”

“Waverly wants you to flick yourself in the forehead.”

Nicole’s arm raises slightly. She looks at Waverly, suspicious. “Do you?”

“Wynonna,” Waverly says, two fingers pressed to the bridge of her nose. “Can you give us a moment, please?”

“Sure.” Wynonna pats Nicole’s shoulder, awkward. “Get better quick, okay? Waverly was worried.”

“Just Waverly?”

“Eh. Maybe a few other people. See you tomorrow.” Wynonna shuffles out, giving Waverly a cautious berth.

Waverly slips her hand out of Nicole’s and wipes at her eyes, sniffling. Nicole slides forward on her bed, distraught. “Waves, please. I’m sorry. If I could go back--” she stops herself.

“You wouldn’t do it any different, would you?” Nicole shakes her head, quiet, and Waverly cries a little harder.

“I just,” Nicole says, struggling to find the right words. “I don’t know what I would do if something ever happened to you.”

Waverly sighs, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “Shit,” she mutters, but she comes closer, their hands tangled again. Nicole tugs her onto the bed, until they’re lying all tucked up into one another. “I love you,” Waverly murmurs.

“I love you,” Nicole whispers back. “We’ll figure the rest out.”

Waverly’s hand tightens around hers. “Together.”

“Together,” Nicole agrees, and kisses Waverly once, another vow.

//

“What?” Wynonna leaps to her feet, furious. “You've got to be kidding me.”

“I assure you, I am not.” The Headmistress glares at her, and Wynonna glares back, her back straight. “There’s no need for dramatics.”

“Just expel me.”

Nicole grabs Wynonna by the back of her robes and yanks her down, pinning her with a hard look. “Thank you, Headmistress. If that’s all?”

They’re dismissed with another sharp nod and Nicole almost has to pick up Wynonna to get her out of the office, her palm pressed firmly against Wynonna’s mouth. The door closes behind them and Nicole drops Wynonna with a pained grunt, shaking her hand. “Gross. Did you have to bite me?”

“Another term,” Wynonna practically shrieks. “Are you kidding me? I’d rather be a dropout!”

Nicole props her hands on her hips. “No you wouldn’t.”

Wynonna points at the Headmistress’s office. “Head Girl? Is she drunk?”

“What’s another half a year,” Nicole coaxes, “you’ll get to spend more time with Waverly.”

Wynonna glares. “And you. Traitor.”

“Oh yeah,” Nicole says, dripping sarcasm, “got you out of there without a single detention for talking back. I’m such an asshole.”

“I’m going to jam that Prefect badge straight up--”

“Wynonna!” Waverly bounces up to them, beaming. “Isn’t it great! Another term, all of us together.”

Wynonna visibly wavers. “Yeah, of course.” She smiles, sincere, slings an arm around Waverly's shoulder. “Can’t separate the Earp girls too soon.”

“Are you going home?” Waverly asks, soft. “I mean, you should… your parents, and the place is a mess. Not that you aren’t welcome, I just--”

Nicole ducks to Waverly’s other side; Waverly tilts her head, going on her tiptoes, and they kiss, soft. “Summer at the Earp Homestead,” Nicole muses. “There are worse places to be.”