Chapter Text
Cat was in the middle of a full-on sulk when the compartment door opened, and a tiny little blonde head poked in.
“Hello!” its owner said brightly. Cat stared at her with something like disbelief. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”
The kid had to be a first-year - she was tiny, for one thing, and she had giant blue eyes that seemed to take up about half her face, behind a clunky pair of glasses. There was also something very insulting about the way she was eyeing Cat, as though she pitied her for having to sit all alone on the train; or worse, as though she thought she’d found a fellow lonely soul with whom to bond. Cat drew herself up with all the dignity a thirteen-year-old could manage and prepared to eviscerate her.
“Well, I don’t know,” she drawled, “I haven’t let anyone else sit with me. What exactly makes you so special?”
To her surprise, the girl’s smile didn’t falter - if anything, it got bigger. “Not much,” she said, “but I’ve got train candy, and I’m willing to share.” She pushed the compartment door the rest of the way open and yanked an enormous trunk in behind her. Before Cat could find grounds on which to object, the girl had lifted the massive thing up over her head and tossed it lightly onto the shelf.
For a moment, Cat was impressed despite herself - then she realized A) that the girl’s parents had obviously cast a weightlessness charm on the trunk before they’d sent her off, and B) that while she’d been staring, the girl had made herself comfortable in Cat’s train compartment, and was now sticking out her hand expectantly.
“Hi! I’m Kara - Kara Danvers.”
“Danvers?” Cat repeated, not taking the girl’s hand. “That’s not a wizard name.”
The open smile dropped a little from the girl’s face as she withdrew her hand.
“You’re right, it’s not,” she answered flatly, and Cat belatedly realized how badly that had come out.
“For the record, I don’t have a problem with muggleborns,” she clarified, because not wanting to be friends didn’t mean she wanted anyone to think she was racist. “I just have a problem with people who invade my space without permission.”
“Of course,” Kara agreed skeptically, and alright, the girl was honestly cute like a puppy… which Cat had just kicked.
She unbent enough to add, “It just surprised me. I’m already wearing my Slytherin robes, and usually only Slytherins will talk to Slytherins. With a few… notable exceptions.” Which brought her back to the reason she was in such a bad mood in the first place, so Cat gave up on the conversation and went back to glaring moodily out the window.
“I’m not actually muggleborn,” Kara said after a moment, and that was surprising enough to make Cat look back at her. “My parents were killed a few years ago - my foster family was muggle, I took their name.”
“I’m sorry.” Cat answered, and Kara smiled at her, all gentleness.
“That’s alright. The Danvers are really great to me, and I still have a cousin, he’s already at Hogwarts!” She looked eager as a thought struck her. “Maybe you know him - Clark Kent? I was looking for him earlier, but I couldn’t find him.”
“Yeah, I know the little nerd.” Cat forced down the bitter lump in her throat to casually add, “He and Lane are in a prefect meeting, they’ll probably stop by whenever they get out.” Kara beamed at her like that was the best news she’d heard all day, instead of The Tragic Story of How Cat Grant Was Sitting Alone on the Train Because She Only Had Two Friends, One of Them Only on a Technicality.
“I’m so glad I ran into you, you’re seriously saving my train ride! What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Cat Grant. You’re Clark’s cousin?” Obviously she was, she’d already said so, but it had taken a few minutes for that to click, with who Clark was related to and who had famously died and left behind a daughter. “You’re Kara Zor El.” she realized.
Kara turned pink. “That’s me,” she muttered. “Do you want some toffee? My foster mom packed some for me, if my sister didn’t steal it all out of my bag before we made it to the train station….” She dug around in her little backpack in a clear attempt to avoid looking at Cat until the subject was adequately changed. Cat let her.
Alura In-Ze had been the head of Magical Law Enforcement, and the presiding seat on the Wizengamot, for almost thirty years - years that very stuffy, conservative wizards liked to call “the golden age of the ministry.” It had been well understood that Minister Zor El was practically a puppet figure for his wife’s authority, but as far as the history books seemed to know, no one had minded that much - Alura was said to be the last direct descendent of Rowena Ravenclaw herself.
Clearly someone had minded though, since the Zor Els’ house had been blown up by extremists six years ago. Neither of the Zor Els had survived the explosion, but they’d had the presence of mind to shove their five year old daughter into the Floo system.
Cat took the wrapped piece of toffee that Kara offered her. She didn’t recognize the wrapping, and after a moment it occurred to her that this must be a muggle candy brand, if Kara’s foster parents had packed it for her. She nibbled tentatively at a corner and then stared at it in awe.
“Is this … coffee-flavored?”
“Oh, maybe. There are a bunch of flavors in the bag.” Kara said, and smiled at her. “Do you like coffee?”
The candy lasted them through about fifteen minutes of small talk, which was fifteen more minutes of small talk than Cat ever deigned to give anybody else. She was reaching her limit even for Kara “small puppy wagging its tail every time Cat paid any attention to it” Danvers, when the compartment door banged open and Lois came stomping in, Clark following more mildly behind her.
“Well you’ll be glad to know that Lord and Willis are the slytherin prefects for your year, and they’re as odious as they’ve ever been.” Lois announced, barely sparing a glance for either Cat or Kara as she flopped into a seat. “Who’s your new minion, Kitty? You can’t be corrupting first years already, you’ve barely had half an hour.”
“Actually, this is the cousin I was telling you about.” Clark shot Lois a reproving glance while Cat was still stinging over the list of people who'd been made prefect over her, and pulled Kara into a polite hug. “Hi, Kara.”
“Hi, Clark.”
Kara’s smile for her cousin was equally polite and mild, which struck Cat as odd, since Kara had gushed about Clark when he wasn’t in the room. There was a story there. She watched them, narrow-eyed, as they sat stiffly next to each other, but said only, “Kara brought me coffee flavored candy, she is going to make an excellent minion.”
“Absolutely not!”
“You can’t have my cousin for a minion!”
Lois’ and Clark’s protests overlapped, and it was Lois who continued, “She’s obviously going to be in Gryffindor with us - how can you minionize her when she can’t even get into your common room?”
“Maybe I could be in Slytherin,” Kara disagreed, with a sideways glance at Cat. There was immediate loud protest from both Gryffindors, but it couldn’t diminish the slight warmth kindled in Cat’s chest by Kara’s obvious regard.
**
Cat didn’t have many close friends, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have assorted hangers-on in Slytherin. She had barely sat down at the table before an older boy named Perry White took the spot to her right, and a moment later Maxwell Lord slid in on her left, shiny new prefect’s badge on blatant display against his robes.
“Hello Cat. Perfect any dark curses over the summer?” was Max’s opening gambit, and Cat suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.
“Mm, shall I demonstrate?” she offered, sliding her fingers suggestively toward her wand.
“Could you two at least wait until after the sorting ceremony to start back up?” Perry suggested, sounding ridiculously put-upon for a boy who had practically launched himself at the bench for the chance to sit next to them. Quidditch teammates overruled all boundaries of age and dignity, Cat supposed.
A line of bedraggled eleven-year-olds were making their way up the center of the room, though, and Cat ignored Max in favor of eyeing them critically. Kara was toward the front of the line, and some tiny squat-looking boy had apparently latched onto her somewhere between the train and the great hall, judging by the worshipful way that he was gazing at her. Was it acceptable for her minion to have a minion?
Kara was the eighth student called, which was at least one advantage to calling herself ‘Danvers’ instead of ‘Zor El’ - although maybe Kara would disagree, judging by the way her knees shook as she sat on the stool and pulled the hat over her head.
Glancing across the hall, Cat briefly locked eyes with Lois in a moment of competitive spirit. ‘Gry-ffin-dor’ Lois mouthed at her, before turning back toward the stage.
The seconds dragged on into almost two minutes, and whispers started to break out across the hall. Listening for tone, Cat decided that they sounded bored rather than anxious - clearly the gossip about Kara’s secret identity hadn’t made it to the general population. She looked back up in time to see the hat open its mouth and crossed her fingers for –
“HUFFLEPUFF!”
“What!?” Lois’ outraged shout echoed through the hallway, and Kara made her way to the Hufflepuff table amidst laughter.
Lois and Clark would just have to be satisfied by a tall, calm-looking first year called James Olsen who sat beside them a few minutes later. That would probably be nice for Clark, who was used to being the only rational person in his whole stupid house.
It was over soon enough, and Cat eyed the new Slytherin first years distastefully over the feast; they were a scraggly looking bunch, compared to beaming, golden Kara Danvers, but they were slytherins, so they’d probably prove themselves given time.
“We’ve got to find a new Beater this year, you know,” Perry informed them as he shoved a mouthful of roast chicken into his mouth. Down the table, Leslie Willis tilted her head sharply toward the conversation - as the other Beater, she was very invested.
“When are you holding tryouts? I have suggestions,” she informed them, leaning heedlessly across the plate of a taken-aback second-year to be heard.
“I will take them under limited advisement.” Perry answered. “No shenanigans this year, Willis - it’s my 6th year, I'm running out of chances. We’re going to win the cup or you are all going to die trying.”
As the only two girls that Perry, with the casual sexism of rich teenaged boys everywhere, had allowed onto the team, Leslie and Cat had been natural allies on a number of occasions, but there was no denying that Leslie was shenanigan-prone. There was also no denying that Slytherin had lost the Quidditch Cup for the previous five years running. The team was strong this year, though - Max was an irritating ant begging at all times to be crushed, but there was no denying that he was a strong seeker, and Cat knew herself to be a superior chaser.
“Do it fast - Ravenclaw’s set as our first match, and none of them graduated, so they’ll have the advantage of a year’s experience together.” she offered.
“Mmm… I’d like a second-year, ideally. You three are all going to graduate the same year, I want to avoid setting Slytherin up for future failure.”
The conversation devolved into an analysis of the Quidditch strengths and personality weaknesses of potential candidates, and Cat felt comfortable tuning them out, turning her attention across the hall to Gryffindor table.
Clark was indeed talking to Olsen, and had gone so far as to place a fatherly hand on his shoulder. Cat snorted to herself - of course he had.
“You’re staring at your crush again,” Leslie told her, reaching around to poke her in the shoulder. She said it as though Cat had become lost in dreamy sighs, instead of making the deliberate choice to ignore them in favor of mocking someone else. Cat tolerated it with a mere eyeroll - having a crush on a Gryffindor was laughable, but it was less of a weakness than the truth.
And the shameful truth was that Cat liked knowing someone as guileless and well-meaning as Clark Kent. He was gentle with her, just like he was gentle with everybody, and nobody had ever done that before. She couldn’t begin to name the feeling it created in her, but she knew it was more meaningful than any third-year romance could ever be.
“He’s so boring, why can’t you stare at someone interesting once in awhile?” Max said, right on cue.
“He’s very good looking, it’s not like she’s staring at his personality.” Leslie pointed out reasonably.
“I like how quiet he is, it makes a nice change from the yammering morons that surround me.” Cat answered sharply, and then changed the topic. “What do you know about the new Defense teacher? I don’t see anyone new at the teacher’s table.”
No one knew anything, of course, but the speculation carried them until Leslie and Max stood to lead the first years down to the common room. It was with a sense of relief that Cat stood to follow them, and return at last to the Slytherin common room after an excessively long summer.
“Miss Grant,” the quiet voice of Professor Armstrong, the Potions professor, interrupted her. “The headmistress would like to see you for a moment in her office. Please follow me.”
Cat did so with only a sharp nod, silencing her desire to protest. Headmistress In-Zur created an initial impression of fairness and openness - she rarely required her title, and was widely known only as Astra to the student body. But it hadn’t taken long at all for Cat to have multiple run-ins with her, and she was well known amongst Slytherins to be partial to her own house of Gryffindor.
Still, she couldn’t possibly claim Cat had broken any rules in the hour she’d been in the school so far.
When Armstrong led her into the office, Kara, Clark, and Lois were already there, seated uncomfortably on the edges of squishy armchairs. Cat helped herself to the spindly chair directly across from Astra’s desk, which had become her unofficial seat on the many occasions that she and Leslie had been dragged into this office the previous year.
Watching Gryffindor Quidditch practice from the bushes wasn’t cheating - it was strategy!
“Thank you for joining us Miss Grant, I won’t take up much of your time - I’m sure you all wish to spend your evening reuniting with your housemates,” Astra assured them, sitting regally behind her large desk. “I’ve called you here on a small matter. Miss Danvers assures me that you three are the only students aware of her identity as the child of the Zor Els.”
“Well yes, Kara is my cousin…” Clark offered, frowning. Lois looked equally uncertain, but Cat thought she knew where this was going.
“Yes of course. So you’re already aware, Mr. Kent, that Miss Danvers has been living with Muggles for her own protection. For the sake of her continued safety with her foster family, it is vital that Kara’s location does not become well-known among the wizarding world.” Astra took a moment to look them each individually in the eyes, and Cat sneered a little at the blatant attempt to Be Serious With Teenagers.
“Of course we won’t tell,” Lois said immediately. “We want you to be safe, Kara.” It was meant kindly toward Kara, who had turned a deep shade of pink as Astra spoke, but something about the way she said it sounded knowing, and Cat was reminded that Lois’ father was the head of the Auror department. She might know more of the story here than the rest of them, if Auror Lane didn’t keep his mouth shut at home.
Of course, Clark’s parents probably knew the whole story too, so maybe it was really just Cat who was in the dark about who exactly Kara might be in danger from.
“I am glad to hear you say so, Miss Lane. This is a serious matter,” Astra said, and her gaze lingered longest on Cat, a little sharper and sterner than it had been on the rest of them.
Cat sneered. “I’m certainly not going to bother gossiping to anyone about some first year - I have better things to talk about,” she answered loftily. “Is that all, Headmistress?”
If Astra was bothered by a thirteen-year-old dismissing her in her own office, she didn’t show it in the slightest. Kara, on the other hand, turned slightly pinker at Cat’s words, and looked down. “Yes, I think that’s everything - welcome back to Hogwarts, all of you. I trust that one of you knows the way to the Hufflepuff dormitory and will be happy to show Miss Danvers the way?” Her eyes twinkled - it was the least well-kept secret in the school that Hufflepuff was directly adjacent to the kitchen.
“We’ve got her,” Clark said firmly, placing his hand on Kara’s shoulder.
They made their way down the winding stairs together and said their good-nights, as Cat headed off in the opposite direction toward her own common room, grateful to go home at last.
**
Cat almost always sat with Clark for breakfast, mostly because Lois refused to wake up in time to eat anything in the mornings, and their housemates had long since given up grumbling about it. It was new to have a Hufflepuff join them, though - Kara was apparently still nervous enough to hang onto her cousin a little, even if it meant breaking house barriers. Olsen joined them after a moment as well, greeting Clark with a slight air of hero worship. Cat despaired for the state of the student body and the wizarding world.
“I can’t believe I’m surrounded by first-years before I’ve even had a cup of coffee,” she announced to the general public. Kara slid a mug in front of her in response - coffee, steaming hot, with just the right amount of milk. Cat decided not to question it, choosing to instead put her energy into a long, greedy sip.
“I guess you can stay if you bring me coffee,” she decided, when she finally resurfaced.
“Well, you did hire me as your minion on the train,” Kara pointed out, practically wiggling with pleasure at this lackluster expression of gratitude.
“True. What’s the other one for?” she jerked her head toward Olsen, who raised a slow eyebrow and made a show out of being unimpressed by her posturing. This was why no one liked Gryffindors.
“Cat, be nice.” Clark chided absently, focused mostly on the paper in front of him. “Have you got your schedule yet? We’ve got Potions and DADA together again.”
“I saw. Slytherin is stuck with the Hufflepuffs for Transfiguration, I’m going to be accidentally turned into a desk chair by that moron Harper.”
“You’re cunning, I’m sure you’ll find a way to survive,” Clark answered amiably, and Cat kicked him.
“What’s the first year schedule like?” he asked, and Kara surrendered hers. “Ooh, double Charms first thing, watch out for Professor Crane - she’s got it out for her students.”
“No, she has it out for Gryffindors,” Cat corrected him gleefully. “Kara will be fine. Watch yourself, Olsen.”
“She’s not wrong.” Clark admitted. “Be careful in her class, Jimmy. You don’t want to get on her bad side if you can avoid it. The rest of your day looks alright… Herbology’s always fun, but bring your gloves - Professor Gates likes to show the first years what they’re in for by starting them with something slimy right off.”
“Stop spoiling all the surprises for them.” Cat teased. “Anyways, you’re the one who’s going to get covered in slime, did you see you’ve got Care of Magical Creatures this afternoon?”
Clark gave her a wounded look. “I can’t believe you didn’t sign up for it with me.”
“ I don’t need any soft options padding my schedule.” Cat said, which was a paraphrase of what her mother would have said if she’d listened to all his begging and signed up for the class.
It was also true. Academics came naturally to Cat, and it was a pleasure to attend her first day of classes, ready to focus in and excel. She settled herself on a grassy patch of the castle’s front lawn afterwards with her first day of homework, glad to enjoy the last of the summer sun before dinner.
She was deeply absorbed in her arithmancy reading, when a shadow was cast over her book, and she looked up to see Kara Danvers next to her.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Kara asked, waving an odd white stick and a piece of parchment at her as evidence that she had no intention to interrupt. Cat supposed she must be working on the assumption that Clark would join them, which was not the case - Clark did the bare minimum of homework, and was probably off being boneheaded with a broomstick somewhere.
Still, Cat didn’t actively mind the company, as long as Kara wasn’t planning to talk - which she presumably wasn’t, since Cat hadn’t so far been especially pleasant to her. She waved at the grass beside her and Kara flopped to the ground, lying comfortably on her stomach with her parchment in front of her.
She didn’t speak at all - when Cat finished her arithmancy reading and looked up, she was scrawling looping letters down the parchment at a rapid pace, using the white stick which was clearly some kind of muggle quill.
It didn’t look like homework, despite the absorbed expression on Kara’s face. Cat found herself breaking her own rule to ask, “what are you writing?”
“A letter to my sister.” Kara answered, smiling lovingly down at her parchment. “She’s really curious about hogwarts, I promised to tell her everything - I don’t think she realizes that the letter is going to be delivered by owl though.”
Cat snorted. “It won’t be - not to a muggle. Hogwarts has an access port to muggle post.”
She thought Kara looked a little disappointed by that, but she rallied. “Do you write home often?” she asked cheerfully, and Cat regretted breaking the silence - now that Cat had spoken to her, Kara clearly felt permitted to make small talk.
“I don’t. My mother and I write when we have something we need to say.” she said, and didn’t mention the weekly letters she’d sent home her first year, anxiously documenting her every minor success. She also didn’t mention the one letter she had eventually received back from Katherine, telling her that such regular communication was hardly necessary by age eleven.
She pulled out her potions homework in a pointed motion and Kara took the hint, turning back to her own letter. There was a blissful 30 seconds of silence.
“Kara! Hey, Kara!” Cat looked up to see the squat boy from the sorting ceremony bounding across the grass toward them. She hadn't been paying attention by the time he got to the stage, but he was clad in Ravenclaw colors, a tacky blue and bronze cardigan peeking out from under his robes.
Kara smiled at him, but Cat thought it looked a little less easy than the way Kara had smiled at her. “Hi Winn - started that transfiguration homework yet?”
“Not yet, I’ll get to it. You ran off earlier before we could talk! What was all that, that was amazing!!” Winn practically bounced with excitement, completely unheeding of Kara’s body language, which suggested that she was considering jumping into the lake to escape;
“Haha, it was nothing.” she said, sending a pleading glance in Cat’s direction.
Cat ignored it, her curiosity aroused. “What was amazing?” she asked, scrawling absentminded notes on her potion’s homework in self-erasing ink.
Winn looked as though he was noticing her for the first time. He took in her slytherin colors and her bored tone and stiffened a little. “Oh, nothing - nothing. Just - she did a really good job on the spell in Charms class.” he explained unconvincingly.
Clearly someone had already taught him to be wary of Slytherins. Cat rolled her eyes and got ready to destroy him, but Kara looked so relieved at the deception that she decided to let it go. Anyways, Kara had to have figured out by now that Clark wasn’t going to join them, and now she had better company than her cousin’s meanest friend.
“That is unsurprisingly boring, you are boring, you should work on that.” she told him and packed her bag. “I have to supervise quidditch tryouts, which are not boring, so I am leaving. If I see Clark rescuing a puppy from a tree somewhere, I’ll send him your way, Danvers.”
**
She didn’t have to hear what was amazing in Charms class directly from Kara - the news traveled through the grapevine at the speed that good gossip always did. Kara, apparently, was some kind of magical wunderkind - spells just happened for her with a touch of her wand.
The thing was, Kara was just somehow always around. At first Cat assumed that it was because she wanted to be around Clark but felt shy about actually seeking him out, but if anything, Kara seemed to be avoiding her cousin, for reasons unknown.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have any friends of her own, either - she and Olsen had clearly bonded from the start. Even Cat had to secretly approve of him, a little - he just seemed a little more solid than the average first year, wandering around looking unfazed and competent. And the hobbit kid, Witt or whatever his name was, had clearly managed to win Kara over with his enthusiastic adoration for her, though Cat personally didn’t see the appeal.
Somehow, whenever Cat was alone, which was as often as she could manage it, Kara seemed to pop up. She didn’t really make conversation unless Cat started it, and she didn’t seem put off in any way by Cat’s occasional rude remarks. She just sat next to her and did her homework, or wrote one of the letters to her sister that she was constantly writing, and she seemed content, and Cat found herself deliberately sitting in the same place next to the lake so that Kara would have an easier time finding her, if she wanted to.
“If you’re going to come out here and take up all my free time, you should start bringing me coffee.” Cat told her at one point, and the next day Kara showed up next to her with a steaming thermos. From that point on, they both dropped the pretense that they weren’t deliberately meeting by the lake every afternoon, enjoying the rapidly fading sun.
Alex Danvers didn’t respond to any of Kara’s letters for almost a month, and Kara seemed to droop a little more every time she wrote one, which Cat was fairly sure she was doing every day, and then one day as September blurred into October she came bouncing over to their usual spot with a package of muggle sweets that her sister had sent her. It came with a short scrawled note that simply read, sounds like you’re having fun. Don’t eat all these in a single day, and don’t die from some weird magic accident.
Kara did eat all the sweets in one day, although she very generously shared them with Cat, handing over a pack of m&ms with only slightly mournful eyes.
The first Hogsmeade trip came up shortly afterward, and as a third year, Cat was allowed to go. She’d been to Hogsmeade once or twice on errands with her nanny as a child, and years even before that she vaguely remembered her father bringing her into the sweet shop, but it was a different and more adult kind of pleasure to be able to walk through the gates of Hogwarts and down to the town with the quidditch team.
She and Leslie and Max went together to look at the shrieking shack. Gray clouds loomed overhead, and the air was damp around them, full of the first chill of winter.
“Solid ghost weather, if that’s what you’re looking for out of the day.” Leslie muttered, rubbing at her arms through her thin robes as she shivered.
“Why would they board the windows up for ghosts?” Max asked, clearly not listening even slightly. "That doesn't make any sense." He was squinting at the shack with narrow-eyed contempt for its stupidity - not an uncommon expression on his face.
Cat couldn’t deny that she had some of the same questions, given power by the stillness of the day and the wet October atmosphere. The shack felt like an undiscovered story, beckoning her forward so she could be the one to tell it.
“I don’t know and I don’t care , maybe they have embarrassing ghostly hairstyles and no one wants to look.” Leslie answered loudly, breaking the spell. “You know where the windows aren’t boarded up? Places that have heat. And butterbeer. Such as The Three Broomsticks.”
“They don’t have ghostly hairstyles if they’re not ghosts.” Max murmured, still staring searchingly at the shack. If there was anything to be seen, someone would have seen it by now, and after a moment he gave up and looked away, nodding curtly at Leslie. “Fine - let’s go get a drink. You’re paying, since it was your idea, Willis.”
Abruptly, Cat didn’t think she could bear to be in their company for another moment. “I’ll catch up with you both there. I have some shopping to do that will go faster without anyone whining behind me.” She told them dismissively. Max and Leslie exchanged sly glances and Cat knew that they thought she was going off in search of Clark.
She might have, except that she was fairly certain that Lois thought Clark was going with her to Hogsmeade as a date, that Clark had no idea he was on a date with Lois, and that neither of them needed her additional assistance to make their afternoon an awkward disaster.
Instead, she wandered on her own into Honeydukes, peering into bins full of ice mice and toffee flavors that Kara’s muggle relatives wouldn’t have dreamed of.
Cat’s father had died when she was four. Going into Honeydukes and picking out a treat was one of the clearest memories she had of him. Most of her memories weren’t really memories at all - they were copy-paste ideas that she had cobbled together from photographs and other people’s stories. Even the emotions felt layered on, all the things she wished she could feel for him carefully taped on along the edges. Hogsmeade had always felt steeped in the potential for his presence - like maybe if she could just sink into it in the right way, she’d feel all the things she wanted to feel about him.
She expected Honeydukes to feel that way even more so - expected to find herself surrounded by the memory of a memory. Instead, she remembered Kara sheepishly glancing at Cat from the corner of her eyes as she unwrapped her fourth mars bar in twenty minutes, the contents of her care package reduced to rubble.
Later she wandered into The Three Broomsticks, packed with Hogwarts students, and made her way to the bathroom as a way to put off looking for her friends for just a few more minutes. In the corner of the bar closest to the bathrooms, as far away from the student crowd as they could get, a group of Hogsmeade natives were huddled over glasses of firewhiskey.
“ - just disappeared from his home overnight, and no one’s heard from him.” one of them was saying darkly as Cat approached, and she paused for a moment. “Not a word about it in the Daily Prophet, of course.”
“Well, Meade always had a few little deals happening on the side - there’s a good chance he disappeared himself and he’s laughing at us all from somewhere tropical.” a woman pointed out.
“Without ever telling his sister, when she’s been running around frantic for over a week?”
“No point in even talking about it. We all know what kind of people Meade was meeting up with. It’s all part of a pattern, and it’s doing us no good to ignore it.” said a 3rd voice, and Cat continued into the bathroom, uneasy in a way she couldn’t quite explain to herself.
**
The weather was getting colder, and Cat was now the only person sitting out by the lake in the afternoon when Kara came to join her. She was clad in a thick sweater, so bright it almost hurt Cat’s eyes, and Cat sneered at it a little as she shoved a bag into Kara’s lap.
“I expect that this will last you about 20 minutes.” she said mockingly, and Kara gave a literal gasp of delight as she explored the contents, pulling out a bar of Floating Fudge.
Cat worked on her transfiguration essay and ignored the way that Kara, hovering two inches in the air as an aftereffect of eating too much spelled fudge too quickly, was looking at her as though she hung the moon.
**
By the time November hit, it was too cold even for Cat to sit out by the lakeside anymore. Slytherin played their first quidditch match against Ravenclaw, and Lois came out and gave Cat a jaunty salute with a vivid blue flag.
They won, barely - Cat scored four times, once in a single continuous swoop from the other side of the field, which resulted in loud whistles of approval from the Slytherin stands.
Their new beater, a red-headed second year named Dave, was shaky at the best of times, and even more so in front of an audience - he let a bludger whizz past him straight at the goalpost, so that Perry had to do a kind of mid-air pirouette out of the way, letting the quaffle sail past as he spun in place to the sound of audience laughter. They were lackluster in comparison to Ravenclaw’s team, who had been playing together for over a year and who functioned as a well-oiled team.
Lord saved them in the end, catching the snitch while they were trailing 60 points behind. It was a win, but it wasn’t the kind of overwhelming victory with which they’d wanted to start off the season - especially since Ravenclaw had smashed Hufflepuff in the first game of the year.
Kara and Cat sat together in the library to do homework some evenings, and now that it was cold, sometimes Clark joined them. Those were less productive evenings - Clark had the best of intentions, but he lacked the ability to sit quietly for more than 12 seconds at a time. He did his earnest best to respect their work ethic, but soon enough was overtaken by the desperate need to make polite comments about the weather, or quiet observations about the things that were obviously happening around them.
“Oh look, there’s Kelly - looks like she’s working on that cheering charm homework!” he said, and Cat smacked him in the head with her arithmancy book. “Ow! What was that for?”
Cat was fairly certain he was only hanging around with them because something awkward had happened in Hogsmeade and now Lois was avoiding him. He alternated his time between following Lois around looking like a very penitent puppy, and retreating to drive Cat up the wall. She finally caved and demanded that they both accompany her on the last trip into Hogsmeade before the Christmas holiday, hoping that with her as a buffer, they could repair their relationship enough to fall back into their usual pattern of softening each other’s worst traits so that she could tolerate them both.
She also caved to Kara’s most pleading face and took the girl’s Christmas shopping list with her. It was, unsurprisingly, all sweets.
The three of them walked down the snowy main street of Hogsmeade, bundled up in heavy cloaks and scarves and clutching cups of cider that were spelled to never go cold.
“Are you looking forward to going home for the holiday, Cat?” Clark asked her gently, and she nudged him a little with her shoulder, because despite herself she was grateful for his concern. Lois snorted.
“At least you don’t have any siblings to deal with, Kitty. The older Lucy gets the more I want to throttle her with her own damn scarf.”
But Cat could read caring in her snide tone as well, and her own voice distinctly lacked venom as she said, “she clearly sounds like the superior Lane.”
Clark kept darting sweet, charmed looks at her as she toppled everything from Kara’s list into her basket with a nonchalant air.
“Thanks for looking after her for me.” he murmured with a bashful smile, and Cat rolled her eyes. Overall, the first half of third year had been pretty alright.