22nd December, 1888, After the Yule Ball — Hogwarts Hallway

"Well, thank heavens that's over!" Carmelina said with a little laugh as they burst out of the Great Hall after the board of governors' evening, her voice startling her by its echo in the relative emptiness of the halls, after the night of festive music and inundating chatter.

It had not been all that bad, really, but Carmelina had always been a terrible dancer (enthusiastic, certainly, but rather bad at remembering to follow any routine at all) and if the school governors had not insisted on the staff being obliged to come, she might have left to see the family over the holidays when the students had gone. As it was, she would be off to Wales tomorrow morning instead... although now that the party was out of the way, she was almost quite taken with the idea of a quiet week or two buried in books here.

Miss Sykes - as a matron - would no doubt be staying, indeed. Carmelina thought she had kept her head screwed on admirably straight all evening, but now, having bumped into Constance as the party dispersed and finding herself ambling down the hall with the blonde in a direction that probably would not see her particularly promptly back to her office, Carmelina was suddenly in a rather giggly mood. More mulled wine than she recalled imbibing, possibly.

"I don't think I've been mandated to attend a ball since I was - oh, eighteen," she said with an incredulous toss of her head at the thought, although for all her complaining about tonight's affair, it had not proven quite so awkward as she remembered her early toe-dip into debuting had most certainly been. Perhaps it helped, being surrounded by professors who were similar specimens on the scale of awkward eccentrics. At least Carmelina had well and truly found her people. That air of solidarity was nowhere so potent as it was with Madam Sykes, bless her, whom she had known from the first - and from the fog - and so felt, perhaps prematurely, that she might have found herself a friendship out of the expected collegial camraderie.

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The evening had not really been as awful as Connie had imagined but she was determined to think badly of it all the same. She had dwelled on her irritation for too long, stoked and tended to it carefully and she thought it would be a terrible shame for all of that bile to go to waste. But the wine had been plentiful and other that one incident – that she had, admittedly, been rescued from by the most flustered young man Connie had ever met – she couldn’t really complain too much.

“I opted for spinsterhood entirely so I could be excused from this sort of nonsense,” Connie admitted with a wry look as they moved slowly down the corridor, making very little headway as each step seemed to involve dodging out of the way of other dispersing revellers whilst simultaneously managing to stay upright. Had she really drank so very much? She didn’t remember doing so…perhaps she was just overheated and needed air? It was definitely too late for a walk and in her state it wouldn’t be wise to take a trip to the owlery.

The alchemy professor seemed in a better condition though and her spirits were so contagious that Connie couldn’t help but laugh brightly as they broke away from the crowd who were heading back down to the village rather than enjoying having their beds a little closer. But god, the mere thought of those stairs…

“I’m sure they’ve missed you more than they’ve missed me,” she added with a smile that couldn’t hide her sincerity.

  

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MJ made me beautiful

Carmelina couldn't resist throwing the matron a look, just in time to catch the wry look accompanying her words. (Carmelina might have enjoyed it, a little, in spite of herself and what she had just said, but nonsense it was.) Looking sideways was rather more disorienting than it should be. Best concentrate a little more on walking, lest any students still out of bed or serving at the party saw her odd amble, and realised that she had no hope of managing a straight line. (It might take her all night to make it to the sixth floor, at this rate.)

What she was more interested in concentrating on for the time being, however, was Miss Sykes and her past, which Carmelina, nosy as she was, had not yet found out much about. Most of what they had spoken about had been taken up by the present: if not the fog or rambling about recent runic discoveries, it had been the school, the students, the castle.

"Oh, I doubt it. I am quite certain everyone I ever danced with still holds a grudge against me for ruining their toes," Carmelina explained with an easy laugh in protest; it was fortunate for everyone that tonight there had been much less impetus to take part in the dancing. No one expected a bunch of gawky professors to manage much dancing. "But I expect you broke a heart or two in choosing spinsterhood," Carmelina said sagely, only with the scarcest touch of teasing. Miss Sykes had those marble-cut looks and far too much presence not to have been noticed, even if she had turned prematurely to a career, and a sharp mind all her own - why, she would have been a catch, and Carmelina wouldn't have blamed the boys for getting their hopes up. She wouldn't blame the boys for getting their hopes up now, to be quite frank.

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It was a rather dizzying sensation to be complimented by somebody with quite so many wonderful attributes and Connie felt a truly embarrassing flush spread across the apples of her cheeks that she only hoped the other woman put down to the wine she had consumed. It had not been a small quantity so it would be very easy to do. Even the smallest glance her way through the evening would have found her with a glass and, at one point, doused so thoroughly that a strangely pretty young Frenchman had been forced to come to her aid.

She felt quite odd about that whole experience and couldn’t at all put her finger on why. But it was nothing to how out of sorts she felt around this woman. The experience in the summer had certainly been intense enough to form bonds under duress but Connie couldn’t say she felt quite the same way around Professor Darrow and she had taken pains to keep herself composed.

Then the wine had happened.

”I have long suspected my mother took it quite personally” she replied in matching tones, laughter stroking each of her words as they left lips that soon turned into a warm smile. “You know, most people don’t assume I chose this life,” she said with a growing sense of pleasure rising through her whole being that for one she hadn’t been assumed to be somehow lacking. She raised a playful eyebrow. “What gave me away?”

  

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MJ made me beautiful

Ah. Carmelina wouldn't deny there was a Ravenclaw-ish spark of smugness inside when it was revealed she had been right about Madam Sykes (even if she had been right about something that she hadn't even thought to bring into question), but... ah. "Just a hunch," Carmelina said merrily. But even a hunch would take some explaining, however pleased she was to have been set apart from most people.

She hadn't thought this far. And with her head muddled by the wine, thinking in itself was an ordeal that took a little more focus than usual. All the same, she wasn't muddled enough to go right to the plain facts that had given Miss Sykes away, that no young man could have overlooked such a beautiful blonde, even if she looked almost untouchable. (And she looked a little less so right now, almost, only an inch or two away from laughter).

"Don't all young ladies?" Carm answered finally, once she had worked out some airy hypothesis to impart, to save herself from digging too particular a hole for herself. "I am quite certain there has never been a shortage of men eager to marry in the world, if only a girl makes up her mind to settle for one." There had been plenty of eligible men about tonight that she had seen some of the elder students and visiting debutantes taking their turns to entertain, even if they were much too good for them; but with marriage a girl's expected career, it had to be rather difficult for any girl to consciously fail at it. Every one of them had to make the choice, some day, about whether to choose it, or something else. Carmelina raised her eyebrows back at Constance, a little teasing again. "Unless she has already made herself other plans."

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For a split second clarity touched Connie’s mind and she realised that Carmelina Cramming spoke in the same vague, unspecific terms that had comprised Connie’s vocabulary since she had been fourteen years old. She kept her face perfectly still as the thought began to take form and grow into something more substantial – a hunch of her own – but she stumbled over her hem for want of paying attention and, blushing furiously, the notion was lost to her.

She was over-tired from the term and had her stumble implied she had probably imbibed wine this evening, even if some of it had gone down her gown earlier, so Connie put her lightening moment down to both those things. She was hardly going to be right was she? Professor Cramming had been married after all, and though Connie knew all too well that didn’t always mean too much – it also reminded her to reply to Lavinia’s latest – there was nothing that made her think the younger woman’s marriage hadn’t been entirely above board.

Perhaps she was just unnervingly perceptive?

“Other plans being not settling for a man?” She inquired with a raise of her eyebrow and a nervous laugh that, coupled with the awkward way she was trying to avoid the Professor’s gaze inadvertently made her look a great deal coyer than she had intended. “For just any man I mean?”

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MJ made me beautiful

It was as Miss Sykes stumbled over herself that Carmelina abruptly realised she may well have done the same, only verbally; even in trying not to, it felt as though she had dug a pothole for herself, that even in trying to be clever and casual Constance had caught her out somehow. Or Carm had said too much without trying: a fault she was not unfamiliar with. Half of what she said on a good day was gibberish anyway. People ought to expect her nonsense.

Not settling for a man. A man - not a man at all? And there she went, reading into statements she shouldn't, as though she were parsing a complex curse-tablet and not an ordinary conversation. Carmelina heard Constance's - Madam Sykes' - correction, clarification, but was almost too struck by her demeanour to properly digest it. For a suspended moment, she caught herself imagining it - the notion that that could have been what the house matron meant -

She didn't believe it for a moment, and so she reached out to press Miss Sykes' arm to steady her belatedly, as if a brief moment of contact would be enough to dispel her illusions, ground her back into reality, where her touch and her topic of conversation would both be duly dismissed as mere nothings. "Well, one might find other things to fall in love with," Carmelina replied a little more carefully. Things, indeed. She waved a hand about, trying to sell this with the same mirth as usual. "A career. Ancient curses. Teaching." She inclined her head at Connie, trying to fathom which of them was the more inebriated, and added a good-natured observation (from one perilous topic to another): "Lucky, I think, that you don't have many flights of stairs ahead of you tonight." Merlin, if even the dungeons seemed far, how would she ever get up to her office? (She supposed she rather needed the six-storey climb to clear her head, after all this.)

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“You could-” The offer to stay with her began to tumble from Connie’s lips before she could reign the words in, fuelled by wine and loneliness and yet she managed to stop herself before she made a total fool of herself. What on earth would the other woman think? Miss Cramming had a knack of noticing things that unnerved Connie just as much as it thrilled her to be around somebody that actually noticed. She didn’t suffer for company in general but being around somebody that was like her had become a thing of fond memory and perhaps…

Connie chastised herself. She was overwhelmed by Miss Cramming; her beautiful face with those eyes that made her want to drown and the curves hidden under the clashing pattern of robes, but most of all her mind. Since the summer expedition, no, before that really, since she had read her book last year Connie had been in awe of the other woman and astounded that others weren’t. How could anybody meet Carmelina Cramming and not think her the most fascinating, engaging woman?

Her whole body felt as though it were flushing as Connie reached up to lay her hand over where the other woman had steadied her, holding her hand there for a moment before smiling and taking both their hands away from her arm. Merlin, she was quite convinced that the other woman must be able to feel how warm she was!

“You could leave me here if it’s easier for you,” Connie said, holding the other woman’s hand for as long as she dared feel the soft fingers against her own. “I don’t want to keep you from your bed.”

  

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MJ made me beautiful

She had not felt so schoolgirlish as this in a long while, as though staying up at the school had sent her back years to a time when fluttery feelings in her chest made any sense at all. She felt as shy and as brazen as a child, as if she could possibly be both at once - or perhaps just a jumbled mess, like someone had picked her up, shaken her and set her down all askew.

It was not a feeling remedied by Miss Sykes’ hand on hers. Not that she was complaining.

She had been asking for this, she supposed, tempting fate with her talk and her thoughts and her touching - though dear Miss Sykes could not fathom how she was torturing her. And of course Carmelina had expected no different in the matron’s response to her observation, but there was a whorl of disappointment in her gut all the same at the notion of the evening coming to an end. Or, rather, this evening stroll. She fancied the past fraction of it had been worth more than the rest of the night put together, and she knew that was entirely impracticable, building up things in her head to dwell on them without good reason. How would she ever sleep if she let herself get this carried away?

Nonetheless, she was grateful for Miss Sykes’ friendship, pleased for a little like-minded company, and there was no harm in that, Carmelina told herself. “You won’t at least let me walk you to your door?” She said, couching the thought in a teasing air, in some kind of imitation of an anxious gentleman, even as she stepped back. No doubt Miss Sykes would want to be rid of her sooner rather than later, lest she keep the matron from her bed.

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Connie was just about able to stifle the exhale that threatened to turn into a whimper but it was a closely won thing. She felt about as in control of her emotions as the students she supervised on a daily basis but unlike them she didn’t have anybody scrutinising her every move. Perhaps that had been her biggest error? Allowing herself the freedom in life to let her foolish heart begin to yearn for things as though they were ever in her grasp – as though they were things she deserved.

Because Merlin did she want Carmelina Cramming. It had been far too long since she had met a woman that excited her like this one and Connie felt as though her whole body was attempting to betray the logical part of her brain. She was flushed, her stomach in knots and her chest tighter than it had been since she last set eyes upon Lavinia – she might have called the whole thing unpleasant if it weren’t for the fact she knew perfectly well how these terrible passions led to pleasure.

Damn Lavinia for that too.

“You’re terribly chivalrous,” Connie said fondly, letting her fingers linger against the other woman’s, not quite ready to cease the contact altogether. Merlin, she wasn’t going to sleep a wink tonight until she had taken matters in her own hands…

“But it’s freezing down by the dungeons this time of year. I’m quite used to it but I wouldn’t want you to catch a chill.” She smiled softly, her eyes alight with genuine affection as she let the pads of her fingers rub against the other woman’s.

  

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MJ made me beautiful

I try, Carmelina might have said, only it was entirely untrue: she did not try to be chivalrous ever, and the trouble was she knew perfectly what had possessed her.

Hopefully Constance Sykes would only think her a considerate friend.

(Hopefully she would not think of her as merely a friend -)

Though the thought was ludicrous, sheer wishful thinking, Carmelina eventually realised she had not made up the fact that the matron had not yet let go of her hand.

Freezing? Carmelina might have added next, because even the hallway felt bursting with heat. She had a line about being sure Connie would be able to keep her warm, but had to physically bite her lip in order to prevent any more blurring. They may be a little tipsy, but the matron would still quick enough to see right through her.

If she had been quite in her right mind, Carmelina would have extricated herself then and there and started being sensible. As it was -
"Then I shall have to bid you goodnight, my fair lady," she said, pulling the other woman's hand up for a courtly kiss and giving a knightly bow of her head - all in jest, of course. Dropping the act, she grinned foolishly and stepped back. "But don't think I won't be worrying about you catching your death down there," she countered, whatever the other woman said. Worrying, perhaps. Thinking about all night? Most certainly.

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Trying her best not to visibly gasp at the touch of the other woman’s lips against her hand – fucking Merlin they were soft! – Connie tensed and forced herself to take a step back, letting Carmelina’s hand drop from hers. It grieved her to do it but with wine still coursing through her veins and such an alluring woman behaving as though she had stepped fully formed out of Connie’s dreams she didn’t especially rate her chances of remaining in control. She was moments away from doing something irrevocably stupid and only years of conditioning prevented her from giving in.

“Hmm,” Connie managed by way of reply, not entire sure that her ribcage was up to the task of containing the rapid beating of her heart at this point. Out of nowhere she had been bamboozled; she felt like a young girl going to her first ever grown-up party but unlike the teenager she had been she knew perfectly well what pleasures there were to be had. Which was, unfortunately, the problem.

“Good night then,” she rushed out breathlessly before taking her leave, glancing over her shoulder twice as she left and cursing herself for both moments of weakness when her eyes met Carmelina’s.

It didn’t occur to Connie until she was safely in her room that she had only looked back because she had felt distinctly as though she was being watched.

  

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MJ made me beautiful