November came in with lots and lots of rain. It lashed at the windows of the castle for days and lots of the older students began casting impervius on their robes before they went out on the grounds for lessons. During breakfast, Caiti heard a number of her classmates talking about skiving off herbology, but she was quite anxious to go to class.

She shouldn't have let herself. It was just the smallest little line she had read the other day in her potions textbook while brewing a Draft to Inducing Dreams. One of the footnotes had mentioned that the original recipe had used a different ingredient, one that was much more expensive, and that the effects of the potion had been altered slightly by the substitution.

The ingredient in question had nothing to do with what she was thinking about, of course. It was just that idea of substituting one thing for another, of creating a slight variation on a theme. She left the Great Hall a few minutes early, pulled her robes up over her head, and ducked her head down against the rain as she headed outside, skirting close to the castle walls where the shadow was more likely to protect her.

Professor Munslow was already in the greenhouse when she arrived. He gave her a warm smile and said, "She's a right blustery one, isn't she?" nodding outside at the rain.

"Yes," said Caiti, pulling out her wand to siphon the water off her robes.

"Feels like it could turn to snow any minute," he went on, still looking outside. But Caiti had other priorities than chatting about the weather.

"Professor, I had a question," she said.

Professor Munslow turned to her, snapped out of his reverie. "I'm doing some research," she began. "For my private lessons with Professor Pym." She wasn't sure why she kept feeling the need to pretend that this was an assignment, but at least it felt like less of a lie now that Professor Pym was in on her project.

"Certainly," said Professor Munslow.

"I'm interested in the idea of substituting one ingredient for another and seeing how it might change the properties and effects of a position, specifically ingredients that are similar in some way. I thought maybe you would know of some books or even a herbologist whose work I could look into... something about plants with similar properties, plants used for similar purposes... that sort of thing."

Professor Munslow nodded slowly as he listened. His gaze fell back as he thought. "One that comes to mind off the top of my head is Herbert Snyder. Great, great herbologist. Written lots of books about what plants to use when, medicinal mostly. Can't think of the name of the book off the top of my head, but he's got at least one or two out with chapters grouped sort of like you're saying, similarities and such."

Caiti hurried to pull out her quill and the notebook she had been keeping all of her research and experimenting recorded in. Herbert Snyder she wrote, and then snapped the book back shut.

"Thank you," she said. Her heart was pounding. "I'll look into that."

A few other seventh years came tumbling in out of the wet, giggling and squealing as pools of rain spilled off their shoes.

Caiti slipped out of their way and found her usual spot along the long table. She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked out through the glass at the rain. It was probably nothing. She probably wouldn't find anything of use.

But she couldn't help feeling excited at every possible lead. The drive to find out something had grabbed hold of her and wouldn't let go.

—-

Caiti went to the library the moment classes ended that afternoon. She had spent so much time here since school had started and been kicked out at the end of the night so often that she thought the librarian looked a little exasperated upon seeing her.

Giving her a small smile as she passed, Caiti made a beeline for the herbology section, and scanned the rows of books until she found the S section. There were at least two dozen books by Herbert Snyder there. Caiti didn't know where to begin. She pulled out the one on the left and flipped to the table of contents, but it seemed to be an in depth analysis of one plant in particular. There were quite a few this way, books with a truly impressive amount of information on one very specific topic, but she stumbled across two that seemed more promising. One was a collection on water plants native to East Asia. The other was a very thick book titled Plants in Healing: How Garden Variety Magical Plants Have Become Key Players in Wizarding Hospitals.

Caiti pulled the book off the shelf and flipped open the cover. She dragged her finger down the list of chapters as she read: muscle aches and pains; headaches; trauma and severe stress; cuts, scrapes, and open wounds... there were ten chapters in all, each a different category of physical or mental injury or illness. And subsections listed under each chapter named a variety of plants used to heal the ailment in question.

They were all familiar names, these plants. Ones she had seen either in potions or in herbology at one point or another. Caiti started turning to the first page of the book immediately. She wandered back down the row of books and over towards the little round table by the window that she and Marlowe used to frequent, nose stuck in the book all the while.

When she had sat down, without taking her eyes from the page, she dug in her back for her notebook and quill. She pulled out a tub of slime that Marlowe had sent her from a muggle toy shop with absolutely no explanation, three of his more recent letters that she had never taken out of her bag after receiving them at the breakfast table, her herbology book, and a roll of parchment she was supposed to be using to write an essay for charms before she found the notebook.

She finally had to wrench her eyes away from the book to clear off her space again and one of the letters caught her eye. It was the most recent one, the letter he'd sent her on her birthday that past weekend. It had come with a box of chocolate frogs and a really fancy set of tools for preparing potion ingredients, but those were back up in her trunk.

The letter included another of Marlowe's little doodles, this time of Caiti wearing a birthday hat and fluffy blue party dress. Little doodly Marlowe was kissing her on the cheek. Up at the top of the page, he had written "Eighteen Reasons I Love Caiti (for Your Eighteenth Birthday)" and then he'd scattered his reasons all over the page: The way she made him laugh, the way he made her laugh, the way she looked when she was annoyed, the fact that she had finally let him kiss her after years of pathetically begging, her diminutive height, the absorbed look on her face when she brewed a potion, her mischievous spirit.... So many sweet, charming little comments that would have stuck with her even without the last one.

But the last one had hit her like a punch in the stomach. "I love how you still make me feel like myself," he'd written. He had said things to this effect before, but something about seeing it on paper made it different.

There wasn't a chance she would ever tell Marlowe what she was working on. Not unless, someday in twenty years, something came of it.

She stared at the letter for a few long minutes feeling very strange — a little fluttery, a little ill — and then she put it away, took a deep, clearing breath, and went back to her book.

—-

"I didn't think the article was all that bad," said Evelyn, peering down at the issue of QMag Marlowe had brought over to show her. It was the one he'd been interviewed for several weeks back. Sean had always borrowed Marlowe's copies so he didn't subscribe himself and Evelyn certainly didn't read it on a regular basis. Marlowe had promised to bring a copy over when it came out, but time had gotten away from them and now it was after the fact.

"It's not," he said. "It's fine overall. It's just... you could be the lousiest detective on the planet and you could figure out it's Caiti they're talking about. And people did. Because look."

He was still in his quidditch practice robes.

He stuck a second magazine on top, this one a copy of Teen Witch dated that morning. The original article Marlowe had told her about seemed like a relatively small, speculative piece, but this time it was the lead story. Quidditch Hearthrob and Mystery Lover - Piecing Together His Cryptic Clues. The cover image was not, as usual, a celebrity witch looking seductively at the camera, but a silhouette of a generic girl with pink question marks dancing around her head.

"First of all," he said, "the title makes me want to throw-up. Secondly..." He paused and flipped to the article. "They named her."

Evelyn slid the magazine over closer to her to read.

After a revealing interview with QMag last week, our journalists have been doing some digging to find out more about hottie Marlowe Finnegan's secret lover! If you missed our last story, Finnegan is the newest reserve beater for the Chudley Cannons. If you're thinking he's some mediocre player, don't count this kid out too soon!

Finnegan was in consideration by the Ballycastle Bats, well known for their consistently strong track record, and dropped only after he was bitten by a werewolf last winter. Our sources have confirmed that Finnegan was protecting his girlfriend when he dove in front of the wolf (we're swooning over here!) and it was only because of her that he got on any team after the attack.

Finnegan's mystery girl apparently wrote letters to every team in the league detailing the laws and precedents that made the Bats' decision to drop him unlawful. But enough legal jargon - back to the gossip.

Finnegan dropped a number of hints in his interview and we're pretty sure we've figured it out: Caitlyn O'Connell. Sister of the recent Triwizard Champion Sean O'Connell and current Hogwarts seventh year, all signs are pointing to this little blondie as Finnegan's school days sweetheart!

Beneath this was a picture of Caiti, Marlowe, Sean, and Evelyn after the third task, Sean holding the cup in his hand. It was one that had been posted in the paper (though much, much smaller than the one of Evelyn kissing Sean). There was a swirly pink arrow pointing right at Caiti and a couple of sketchy love hearts hovering between Caiti and Marlowe's heads.

There was a little more to the article after that, but Evelyn had gotten the gist and the bubbly, overeager writing and overuse of exclamation points was a little hard to stomach.

She pushed the article back towards Marlowe, shaking her head. "I don't get why people read this stuff."

Marlowe sat back in his chair and folded his arms. "Couldn't tell you," he said.

Evelyn thought he looked worried.

"Caiti's not going to be mad," she said softly. "She's tough. And she loves you."

"I know," he said. "I just feel bad. She deals with a lot because of me."

Evelyn's eyes drifted back to the picture in the article, to Sean's arm around her waist and the easy way she was leaning into him.

"She's lucky to have you," Evelyn said, quieter still. "She knows that."

She could feel Marlowe scrutinizing her now and she took a sip of her water to cover her face for a minute while she rearranged her expression.

"Ev, are you okay?" he asked.

The question caught her off guard. It wasn't like Marlowe to ask something like this so bluntly, especially not to anyone who wasn't Caiti. She and Marlowe had become much closer friends towards the end of their seventh year than they had been through the rest of school, but it wasn't long they had been spending any amount of time together without Sean or Caiti or both present.

The fact that they did even now was circumstantial.

With a glance toward the door, she said, "Sean's never home."

She didn't elaborate, but she could tell Marlowe was able to imagine what she meant by this. That things just didn't feel how they were supposed to.

"It's a new job," said Marlowe after a pause. "He's probably just figuring out how to balance everything still. It'll get better."

Evelyn nodded, but she wasn't sure she believed it.