As October went on, Marlowe continued to spend his now ample free time pestering Caiti while she tried to get things done. He actually did intend to be helpful however he could, but somehow he always ended up distracting her anyways.

He'd just reorganized all her ingredients for her while she messed with all her plants in the other room, and was feeling so proud of himself he had to interrupt her to show her immediately. Organizing was not something he'd ever fancied himself good for before. Anyone who'd seen the inside of his trunk next to Sean's back in school would have known that.

"Just give me two minutes," Caiti said. She was bent low over her sun violets. One of them wasn't looking so great and she had just gotten a letter back from the foundation that had sent her the seeds in the first place giving her some tips about how to diagnose the problem and deal with it.

So Marlowe waited impatiently while she tried some spell, and the moment she straightened up, he said, "Come on. You need to admire my work."

Caiti followed him back into the office. Marlowe made a very grand gesture towards the shelf. "Voila," he said.

Caiti gave him a bemused smile. "You need to go back to work," she said. "Unemployment is making you crazy already."

"It's not unemployment. It's my off season."

Caiti stepped closer to examine how he'd set everything up.

"It's alphabetical mostly," he said. "But the top shelf is just stuff for the wolfsbane potion, since you're using that all the time."

"This is really helpful," Caiti said, more sincerely now. "Thank you for doing that."

"Do I get to distract you for five minutes now?" he asked, reaching for her waist.

Caiti just tilted her face up to his.

Marlowe leaned down and kissed her.

"I do have something to talk to you about actually," he said.

Caiti's eyes widened a little and he laughed. "Not a bad thing, don't worry. It was kind of a surprise for your birthday, but I feel like you should know a little early."

Caiti stayed quiet, but she'd started to smile just a little in anticipation.

"I didn't really know what to get you," he said. "And I was trying to think of something good, but like.. I don't know. I built you a whole greenhouse and now it's kind of hard to top myself, you know?"

She laughed. "You don't need to top yourself. You could get me a chocolate frog and I'd be happy. You don't even have to get me anything."

"Course I do," he said. "I want to. But anyway... I was thinking about it a long time and well... I decided maybe a thing wasn't what I was looking for. So I booked a weekend away instead."

Caiti's eyes widened again, but this time with surprise. "What?" she asked. "Really? Where?"

"Cornwall," Marlowe said. "I know it's not summer or anything, but I just thought it'd be nice to have a few days just us. And the beach would be pretty, even if it's cold. It's not your actual birthday because that's during the week and I figured your parents would want to see you and all. So the day after. Plus it's Halloween that weekend."

Caiti hugged him right around the middle, so fast and so tight that she nearly knocked the wind out of him.

"Woah," he laughed, wrapping his own arms around her. "I take it this was a good idea."

"Yes," she squeaked. She bounced up and down on her toes a little, arms still around him, but she settled eventually, turning her face so her forehead was pressed right against his sternum.

Marlowe smiled, resting his chin on top of her head. And then he started to get the teensiest bit nervous.

—-

Caiti wasn't quite sure how he managed it, and maybe his little announcement had just put her in a good enough mood to agree, but that evening Marlowe got her out on the quidditch pitch.

It was a beautiful fall day, no rain for the moment, probably one of the last nice days left in the year. Caiti was feeling extremely unsure of this idea, but she was there.

The pitch was empty, thank god. She didn't need an audience for this.

"I swear this will be fun," Marlowe said excitedly.

Caiti could only bring herself to laugh at his enthusiasm.

He held out his broom to her.

"Right away?" Caiti asked, eyes widening.

"Well, what else are we going to do? Look at it?"

"I don't know," said Caiti indignantly. "I don't know why I agreed to this."

"Just practice kicking off and come right back down. Like flying lessons day one."

Caiti climbed onto the broom feeling very stupid. Marlowe nodded for her to go ahead. She kicked off from the ground, rose about six feet in the air, and quickly tilted the broom back down to land again. It moved so fast, much faster than she remembered.

"Oh my god," she said, heart pounding, and she jumped off the broom and held it back out to him. "There you go. I did it. Let's go home."

Marlowe stifled his laugh.

"You did not warn me it would go that fast," Caiti snapped.

"Look, try again just..." He took the broom from her. "You don't have to jump. The school brooms needed a lot to get going, but this one you can just sort of... rise up." He showed her how all he needed to do was rise up on his toes and the broom started to lift on its own.

He handed it back.

Caiti gave him a very skeptical look, but took it back.

She tried again, this time controlling it a little better, though she still wanted to be down as quickly as possible.

"That was it! You had it. Go back up. Fly in a little circle or something. You can stay low."

"I feel ridiculous!" Caiti complained.

"You look adorable. You're a natural."

Caiti just gave him a look.

"Fine, then let me get on and I'll show you."

"Marlowe," Caiti said, shutting her eyes. "You go from the ground to the goals in like one tenth of a second."

"Not with you, I wouldn't," he said. "You trust me, right?"

"In this situation, not at all."

Marlowe just laughed. "I promise not to do that. I'll be extra careful."

Again, Caiti wasn't sure how he convinced her, but next thing she knew, they were both on the broom, Marlowe behind her with his arms around her and his hands clasped on top of hers on the handle which she was gripping for dear life.

He pushed off from the ground and just hovered there. "See," he said. "Not so bad."

"Can you just narrate whatever you're going to do?"

"I'm not going to do it," he said. "You're in charge. I'm just here to help."

"Marlowe."

"You're fine. Just lean back slightly and lift up on the handle. Just a little. That way you'll rise slowly."

Caiti leaned back into his chest. Slowly, they started to rise higher. "I can't look," Caiti said.

"You probably should," he said. "Coincidentally, looking where you're going really helps."

Caiti tried to straighten them back out. They'd risen a whole ten feet. "What are you stopping for? Keep going."

"Marlowe, do you not see how far away the ground is?"

They were still very far below the first level of bleachers.

Marlowe guided her hands and they started to rise again. Caiti was panicking. She'd never flown this high, ever. In flying lessons they had mostly stayed near the ground, practicing flying around and through things. Some students had tried more advanced tactics eventually, but Professor Whitby never made anyone fly higher than a few feet.

"Marlowe, this is very, very high," said Caiti.

"We're not going much higher," he said. "I just want you to see something." He kept them rising up until they were above the stands. "Look."

Caiti had been staring resolutely at the handle of the broom, trying to notice how far away the ground now was or how high they'd gone, trying to let everything else blur out of focus. She lifted her gaze slowly. In front of them was a landscape of trees, bright orange and yellow and red. They could see the little village they sometimes walked to in the distance and the river cutting through the forest.

"Woah," Caiti said softly. It was beautiful. It reminded her a little of looking out at the mountains from Ravenclaw tower, but it was different, too. They were outside. They were in it.

Marlowe pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.

"See, you trust me," he said, a little smile in his voice.

Caiti nodded.

She was suddenly very aware of how alone they were, of Marlowe's arms around her, his cheek resting against the side of her head. In just a week, they'd been in Cornwall, just the two of them. Her heart pounded at the thought.

Something was really changing between the two of them. Or maybe changing wasn't the right word. Something was becoming very solid.

"Can we fly over that way a little?" Marlowe asked. "Over by the river or something. This area's all protected from muggles."

"Yeah," Caiti said softly.

Marlowe took control after that, but he was good about it. He flew slowly, cautiously. There were a thousand opportunities to surprise her, which even a year ago, he probably would have taken full advantage of. He'd have thought it was funny to go fast and make her scream at him to stop.

But he didn't do that, now.

A breeze rustled through the trees, the sun sparkled off the river, and the water gurgled along below them.

"Marlowe, can you land somewhere, please?" Caiti asked suddenly.

He was quick to do so, touching down beside the river. "Are you okay?" he asked quickly, but Caiti just stepped up on a rock so she could reach him better and kissed him. She held onto his arms, just below the shoulders and Marlowe dropped the broom. His fingers found her waist.

They kissed for at least a minute, until Marlowe pulled away to breathe, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

"Sorry," Caiti whispered. "That just... couldn't wait."

He laughed, a bright smile crossing his face.

"No," he said. "No, it couldn't."

—-

On Thursday, the day of Caiti's actual birthday, the greenhouse was quiet for what felt like the first time since the Cannons had been knocked out of the playoffs. Marlowe was at his once-weekly off-season training session and Caiti was alone with a rare desire to do something.

She felt antsy today. She was itching to try something a little rash, maybe a little risky, even wasteful. She wanted to stop trying and stop planning and just do something. See what happened.

It had been how this all started, really. Yes, she had read a lot, too, but so much of those early days had just been Caiti throwing things in a cauldron and seeing what happened.

No it had never led anywhere, but who was to say it wouldn't today.

Her mandrakes were still too young to even re-pot, let alone put to use, but she looked around the greenhouse wondering what else would be worth experimenting with a little.

There were the sun violets, obviously, but she'd finally gotten over her fear of plucking off petals and had tried a number of things with them already.

There was one thing she hadn't tried though, and that was mixing them with the venom.

She'd tried to talk herself into using it several times in the past week, but without luck.

Today though, she felt oddly confident.

She took down the first little bottle, the one from August. She brought it over to her work table, and then she stood there and she thought.

There were several routes she could go with this.

She could try to mix it with just the sun violet petals. She could try mixing it with a few of the ingredients from the wolfsbane potion. She could try just making the wolfsbane potion and add the venom in, see how it reacted.

Caiti wasn't sure that this would actually teach her anything about how the potion reacted within Marlowe's actual body, but it seemed a better start than anything else, so she got to work preparing the ingredients. She made this potion so often now that it really had become second-nature. It was almost funny to think how difficult it had once been, how even after she had mastered it she had required absolute concentration for such a long time.

It was funny how the things that were so daunting and difficult in the beginning became so natural with time and practice. That was true for lots of things in her life.

When the potion was ready, still bubbling but settled into its familiar shade of green, Caiti got her notebook ready, dipped a quill in her ink pot, and then uncapped the bottle of venom. There were only a few drops inside, but she dropped them into the cauldron anyway, hoping it was enough.

She could tell right where the drops had fallen, because all the sudden, the potion began to change color right around that spot. A bright white circle emerged surrounding them and slowly, the rest of the liquid began to turn white, too. The bubbling came to a stop. The potion sat so still, so completely utterly calm. Caiti was almost afraid to breathe, lest she disturb it.

Then, when the white reached the sides of the cauldron, steam began to rise out of the cauldron, not so much in wisps, but all at once, like a very translucent cloud of fog, resting very low to the ground.

Caiti stared at it, mesmerized.

It was like the potion had found the bad thing and calmed it, collecting it in one place.

She scribbled this all down her notebook very quickly, desperate not to forget a single detail of what she'd just seen. She wanted to try so many things now. What would happen if she mixed the venom with a mandrake restorative draught? What similarities were there between these two potions? Did they share any common ingredients? Caiti couldn't remember. She had only made the mandrake restorative draught once, years ago.

What if she added her sun violets to the wolfsbane potion? What if she combined elements of both potions into one?

But Caiti only had one bottle of venom remaining and she just couldn't bring herself to use both in one day. As much as Marlowe had reassured her he would collect more each month, she didn't want to count on that, and even if he did, once a month was really not that often, especially when he only got a few drops each go.

Still, Caiti felt like she understood the wolfsbane potion on a level she never really had before. She felt like she had just witnessed what happened inside the drinker and it had been one of the most fascinating things Caiti had ever watched.