Caiti had been positively swamped with owls since Saturday, most of which she was only now, on Wednesday evening, getting around to opening. She sat in the common room with all of them now, taking over an entire large study table. She'd had to sort them into stacks by priority: those from her friends and relatives first, then letters from the people who were interested in mentoring her, and then everything else.

This last stack was the largest, and she could only assume they were from people who had read either the article about her award that had come out in the Sunday issue of the Daily Prophet or the new speculative article that had been in the most recent issue of Teen Witch.

The Prophet article had not been front page news, but it had been a fairly large article with multiple photographs, including one of her hugging Marlowe at the bottom of the stairs right after the presentation that had quickly revived the gossip magazine's old interest in their relationship.

She opened the letter from her parents first, which had many renewed congratulations and assurances that they were proud of her. It was very nice, but Caiti was so sick of saying thank you that she only skimmed it and put it aside for later when she had come down from it all.

Marlowe had sent Caiti three separate letters with long lists of questions since Saturday. She had answered the first the very same day, but the other two she was only getting around to now. When the school week had begun again, it had sunk in just how far behind she was on her homework and preparations for N.E.W.T.s. The exams were less than three months away, and Caiti had hardly thought about them all year.

She was still checking on her sun violets several times a day, but otherwise, her research had taken a backseat to everything else for the first time all year. Caiti felt strangely present in her own life. After months and months of living mostly inside her own head, it was weird to be focused on the things actually happening around her.

It was nice though, too, to have a bit of distance from everything. A bit of space would probably clear up some of the things she'd been struggling with and give her a new boost of energy to get working when this became her sole focus that summer.

Answering Marlowe's questions, however, felt like a priority.

She was halfway through this task when Amelia showed up and plopped herself down at the little round table Caiti was sitting at near the large windows in the common room.

Caiti looked up, expecting Amelia's usually bubbly self, but she looked very glum indeed.

"Hi," Caiti said.

"Hi," said Amelia. She sounded just about as glum as she looked.

"What's up?" Caiti asked. "Are you okay?"

"Have you ever felt like your friends were never really your friends at all?" she asked quietly. Caiti followed her gaze over to where Miriam, Lila, and Sophie were sitting near the fireplace. Lila had her nose in her homework but even from this distance, Caiti could read on her face that she was trying to disengage from whatever was happening around her.

"No," Caiti said, watching Miriam gesticulate about something or other with a very ugly look on her face. "I can't say I have."

Amelia didn't say anything else, just continued to watch the other girls.

"Is it your friends or a friend?" Caiti asked, though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

"Miriam," Amelia said.

"What's she doing?"

Amelia shook her head. "Picking at everyone," she said. "What she always does." She took a breath and then added, "Saying I'll never pass more than a few N.E.W.T.s because my head's too full of boys and that Lila's going to look great on paper but she's going to flop in every job interview because she's too quiet. And that you're a show off and a know-it-all."

"Just because Miriam says it doesn't mean you have to believe it."

"I know," she said. "I don't. It's just, I used to think it was fun, being part of all her gossip and everything. We would always laugh along with her. But it doesn't feel very fun anymore. It feels mean. And hearing her do what she does to everyone else to me makes me feel sick."

Caiti didn't know what to say. She'd never hung out with the other girls in her year much. She had spoken to them more this year than any other purely because her friends were gone. Lila and Sophie were alright, really, and Amelia had grown on her a lot, though she'd found her exasperating for most of the previous six years. But it was Miriam who had always discouraged her from trying to be more than friendly with any of them.

"I get why you were never really friends with us," Amelia said. "We were awful."

Caiti didn't answer her right away. She had to think about what to say. Across the room, Miriam was shooting the two of them dirty looks.

"I did what made sense for me," she said finally. "And you can do that, too."

—-

Caiti didn't end up reading the other letters that night. She'd spent over an hour talking to Amelia and it had actually been quite a nice conversation. They'd talked about N.E.W.T.s and classes and the date for the next Hogsmeade weekend — regular things Caiti had not had the opportunity to really discuss this year. She felt almost normal.

By the time Amelia had gone up to bed and Caiti had finished answering all of Marlowe's questions, it was almost ten o'clock and she was exhausted. She had wanted to do her responses justice. It meant a lot to her that he cared to ask, that he wanted to understand. And some of what he'd said had really gotten her thinking. She'd had to get out her notebook and scribble a few things down so she wouldn't forget them.

As for the rest of the letters, she would look through them tomorrow after she finished the charms essay she'd been working on earlier that evening.

As she gathered them all up trying to arrange them in her bag without messing up her piles, one letter caught her eye. She'd placed it in the stack of miscellaneous letters, but by mistake apparently, because it was from Sean.

It was the first letter he'd written her all year.

She expected something about her presentation. It was what everyone else was writing her about, after all. But Sean had not written much at all. A small bit of parchment read, "Meet your new nephew!" and behind this was a photograph of a large brown dog with a gray beard, sitting in Sean and Evelyn's flat. It's tail was thumping and it's eyes were cast up hopefully like maybe they had gotten the dog to sit still by holding up a treat. She smiled.

It was very unexpected, but there was something about those few words Sean had written — the exclamation point, the way his handwriting wasn't quite as neat as usual, the lack of salutations — that made her feel like Sean was starting to feel like himself again. A dog, she thought, would probably be very good for him.

—-

Sean and Evelyn both sat on the floor again, Barry between them. This had been how they had spent the majority of every evening the past week since Sean had brought him home. Evelyn didn't mind. It meant that they talked, and having Barry to pet gave her something to do with her hands.

Sean was positively obsessed with Barry and Barry was positively obsessed with Sean. They were inseparable. The dog followed him everywhere he went, never letting Sean out of his sight. He'd bought a fancy dog bed and Barry slept right beside where Sean slept on the couch. He even brought Barry to work with him at the Magical Menagerie, because the first day he'd been left alone he had apparently panicked and destroyed a blanket and several pairs of socks from the laundry basket.

Evelyn lay on her side, propped herself up with her elbow, and scratched Barry behind the ears.

"Margaret asked if we were free tomorrow to come over," she said, keeping her eyes on the dog.

"Yeah," said Sean at once. "Yeah, I'm free."

"Okay," said Evelyn. She pressed her lips together tightly. "I think she said seven or so."

"Great," said Sean. She thought he looked a little nervous, despite how quick he'd been to agree.

After a minute, she lay down on her back, bent her arms above her head and yawned.

To her surprise, Sean lay down, too. Between them, Barry let out a dramatic sigh. Evelyn smiled and reached over to pat him at the same time Sean did. They bumped hands and both turned to look at each other at the same time.

Evelyn took her hand back.

"Have you ever seen a muggle magician?" she asked.

"I doubt it," Sean said. "Not that I can remember."

"That's what Margaret's boyfriend does," she said.

"Does he know she's a witch?"

"Yeah, she told him. He took it pretty hard. He's mad he can't do our magic, but I think his is really cool. I can't figure out the tricks."

"Don't magicians just pull rabbits out of hats and stuff?"

Evelyn laughed. "That's the stereotype, yeah. I've never seen him do that one though."

"How'd she even meet him?"

"I don't know exactly," Evelyn said. "He was doing magic somewhere and she saw and I guess they got to talking? She didn't tell him she was a witch for kind of a long time, though."

"I always wondered how you'd go about that," Sean said. "Like with Marlowe's mum. How do you just explain that to someone who doesn't think it's real?"

"Well, when I got my Hogwarts letter, it said that I'd been recommended for a prestigious boarding school and we were asked to set up an appointment to get more information. And then Professor Westwick showed up and explained the whole thing. My parents thought it was a scam for at least an hour, but he showed us all sorts of spells and things and pointed out the kinds of magic I'd already been showing and, I don't know... it just made sense. A lot of odd stuff used to happen to me that my parents thought I was making up. They figured I just had an imagination."

"And they didn't think it was just muggle magic? What Westwick did?"

"Maybe at first," she said. "But... well I don't remember all the things he did, but I do know he turned our cat green and you couldn't really explain that away with muggle magic tricks."

Sean snorted. "What if we did Barry?"

"Barry looks good just how he is," said Evelyn. They both smiled up at the ceiling.

"What if I did you, then?" asked Sean. "You'd look good with green hair. You wore green to the Yule Ball."

"I am not cool enough for green hair," said Evelyn.

But Sean already had his wand out, and he'd swished it at her before she even had a change to think about blocking the spell.

She sat up quickly, mouth open. "Sean," she said in disbelief. Her hair fell into her peripheral vision as she moved, emerald green.

Sean sat up with a mischievous look on his face. "I'm not kidding, Ev. It looks kinda good."

"I can't believe you just did that," she said.

"I dare you to go out with it," he said.

"No way."

"Just take Barry for a walk or something."

"I can't go out like this!"

"You can do mine, too. Any color you want."

"You can't be serious," said Evelyn.

"I'm completely serious. I wouldn't just issue a dare and not be serious about it."

Evelyn stared at him in shock for what felt like a very long time. It had been such a long time since Sean had acted this way. She had forgotten he used to be quite funny. She'd forgotten that he and Marlowe had once been partners in mischief (though Sean had, even then, been the more level-headed, sensible decision-maker of the two). It wasn't just the past six months or so that had hidden this side of him. It was the whole of their seventh year, too. The tournament had taken a lot more out of him than she'd realized.

She took out her wand, contemplated him for a while, then used her own color-changing spell to turn his hair periwinkle blue.

"Let's go look," said Sean, grinning, and he got up and headed for the bathroom, Barry at his heels.

They stood in front of the mirror and Evelyn couldn't hold in her laugh. Her work wasn't quite as impressive as Sean's. She could still see his blonde roots through the blue, whereas her own hair looked as though she had just come home from the salon. But that was thanks to Sean's level of ability in transfiguration, which she had never quite been able to match. And human transfiguration spells, even just color changing spells, were very tricky.

"We cannot go out like this," she said.

"We most certainly are," said Sean. "Aren't we, Barry? Want to go for a walk?"

Barry bounded out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and presumably to the door because Evelyn heard a single bark issue from that general location.

She turned back to her own reflection in the mirror, tucked her newly green hair behind her ear, feeling very self-conscious.

"You're crazy," she whispered.

But Sean just said, "Come on. Barry's ready."

Back out in the living room, he hooked Barry's leash on, handed Evelyn her black puffy vest off the hook by the door, and shrugged on his own jacket. Then he opened the door and led her outside and down the stairs.

It was actually quite nice outside, even though it was dark. The air had a hint of spring in it, now it was nearing the end of March.

Evelyn folded her arms across her stomach and smiled down at the ground as they walked. Barry led the way, weaving this way and that along the sidewalk so he could sniff as much surface as possible. 

"It feels like everyone's staring at us," said Evelyn.

"They aren't," said Sean. "And if they are, we look ten times cooler than we did a few minutes ago, so how could you blame them? Come on, let's go this way.

He led her around a corner and towards a slightly busier area than the street they lived on. There were more shops and things this way and that meant more people. Evelyn needed something to distract herself from how conspicuous she felt, so she said, "Remember when we learned color-changing spells at school?"

"And I was partnered with Marlowe and he left a streak of pink in my hair and no one told me?" said Sean with a laugh. "Yeah, I remember."

"I told you!" Evelyn corrected.

"After like three hours!"

"Well, that's only because I didn't see you for a while after we left that class. You had care of magical creatures and I had divination."

"Excuses," said Sean.

Evelyn bumped him with her shoulder in protest, and immediately her cheeks grew hot. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't done anything like that in so long. Her heart beat very fast.

"Caiti and Marlowe almost peed their pants laughing," said Sean. Evelyn thought — though she was not about to risk looking at him — that she could hear him smiling and she suspected it wasn't because of Caiti and Marlowe's sense of humor.

"I just can't believe no one told you in class that afternoon," Evelyn said.

"I imagine Marlowe was signaling to everyone to keep quiet about it," Sean said.

They reached a corner at the end of the block and had to wait for traffic to pass before they could cross. "Sorry," said a girl who'd just come across from the other side of the street, "I just have to ask — where do you get your hair done?"

It was pure willpower that stopped Evelyn from bursting out laughing right away. "He did it for me," she said, glancing at Sean.

"Are you a hairdresser?" she asked.

"No, we did it at home," said Sean. She could hear the laughter threatening to break through in his voice, but only slightly.

"You got that with a box dye? It looks incredible. How'd you get it so even?"

"Thanks," said Evelyn. "He's sort of a perfectionist."

The light turned and they smiled goodbye to the girl who was not headed in the same direction they were. Evelyn clenched her fists like it might help her keep herself under control until they were far enough away from the girl. When they'd crossed the street and walked half a block more, they looked at each other, and Evelyn cracked a grin. Within seconds, they'd both busted up laughing.

Evelyn hadn't laughed this hard in such a long time. Her stomach crampe dup, and there were tears in her eyes, and finally, finally they weren't tears of sadness or loneliness or frustration. At the next corner, she leaned automatically into Sean's side, like she would have done a year ago. "Oh my god, I can't breathe," she said.

Sean switched Barry's leash to his other hand and put his arm around her waist in a sort of side hug. "Are you a hairdresser," he repeated as his laughter died down enough to speak.

"You did do a better job than me," Evelyn said, trying not to show how nervous this new physical contact made her. "Yours looks like it's growing out."

"That's 'cause you did a more realistic job of it," Sean said.

He let go of her when they started walking again, but they stuck a little closer together, arms brushing sometimes.

They kept walking a long way, all the way until they reached the river, talking and laughing and reminiscing all the while about old stories from school.

There were a few people milling around here and there by the water. They passed by an elderly couple sitting on a park bench and a couple of young teenagers still wearing their school uniforms and laughing about something or other.

Sean stopped at the top of a small footbridge and they stood looking out at the dark current, leaning their elbows on the stone. They fell quiet for the first time in all the time they'd been talking.

Evelyn's head was spinning. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but the thought of actually uttering any of them made her so nervous.

Barry sat between them, panting and staring straight into the stone wall of the bridge as though he too could see over top it to look out at the river.

Evelyn laughed a little. "Barry, you're weird," she said, patting him on the head.

Sean glanced down at him, too and grinned. "Builds character," he said.

Evelyn smiled, and it was then that she realized even though she was feeling nervous, her nerves about saying something to Sean right now were very different than they had been just a few months ago. She wasn't scared of how he would respond anymore. She was nervous, because he was standing close to her and he wanted to be there. She was nervous because she had butterflies in her stomach again, something that had been happening quite a lot lately. She was nervous, because he finally felt like her friend again and she was so afraid that rushing ahead with the way her brain kept telling her to kiss him would only mess it all up.

The teenagers had left shortly after they'd arrived, and the old couple was standing up from the bench now. When they'd gone, Sean glanced around to make sure the area was completely clear, and then took out his wand. He waved it between them, restoring their hair to its usual color.

"You look good in green," he said. "But I like your regular hair better."

"You seem more like yourself than you have in a long time," Evelyn blurted out.

They looked at each other.

"Since before the tournament maybe."

Sean didn't answer for a long time. He crouched down and pet Barry, face down so she couldn't see his expression.

Evelyn turned back to the water wishing she hadn't said anything. She had ruined it. They'd been getting along so well and then she'd gone and brought up the fact that they hadn't always been and she'd ruined it.

But then without standing up, Sean said quietly, "I feel more like myself." She thought there was a touch of tightness in his voice.

"I feel like I got my best friend back," she said. She wanted to kick herself as soon as she said it. She shouldn't have. She was going to make him feel bad. But she couldn't hold these things in anymore.

Sean stood up again, and he stepped around Barry, who had laid down right on the hard ground while Sean had been petting him. Without a word, he pulled Evelyn into a hug. She barely caught a glimpse of his face, but she thought his eyes might have been a little glassy.

Evelyn turned her cheek into his chest and stared out at the dark water. Sean's hand smoothed up and down her back at first, but eventually, he fell still, and she felt him tuck his face down into her hair. She breathed in deeply through her nose. Barry didn't interrupt this time like he had at the Magical Menagerie.

It was a long time before either one of them let go.