Caiti had spent far more hours in the greenhouse than she had at home, including to sleep, in the past two weeks. She had finally gotten past the point of feeling like she needed help and constant confirmation from Alora or Professor Pym and she'd gotten hooked on everything again. If she wasn't at work, she was here, tinkering away. She was running on fumes, but she just couldn't stop herself carrying on late into the night, day after day.

She was so determined to figure out what had gone wrong, what little alteration might restore the original properties of the wolfsbane potion. Marlowe was planning to take both potions when the full moon came around in a few days, to see if they would negate each other or if they could work simultaneously, but Caiti wasn't happy with two separate potions. She wanted one. One that did everything she needed it to do.

It was dark out the windows, but she had no idea what time it was. Maybe eleven pm. Maybe even later. She was sweaty from the heat of her cauldron, bubbling in front of her and she felt almost feverish. She dropped a bit of the mandrake root she was experimenting with into her cauldron and at once a familiar, bitter but slightly gingery scent rose up.

Suddenly, Caiti felt a little woozy. She wiped at the sweat on her forehead and tried to take a deep breath, but inhaling more of the scent of that cauldron seemed to be the wrong choice, because her stomach suddenly ached and she clambered up to get to the toilet, vomiting as soon as she made it. Stunned, Caiti sat on her knees, staring blankly at the wall. She leaned against the bathroom wall and put a hand on her stomach.

She couldn't remember the last time she had thrown up. Tears pricked at her eyes. She felt humiliated even though she was all alone. She couldn't believe it had happened.

She could hear her cauldron still bubbling out the still open door, but she was afraid to go back out in case smelling it set her off again.

It seemed so impractical that just that could have made her sick so quickly, though. She had been working with mandrakes for weeks now.

The thought took a while to develop, forming in her consciousness drop by drop, but once it was there, Caiti felt like ice: her period was at least a week late. She hadn't really noticed. It had been late before, but not since she'd started having sex. Not since she'd needed to be aware of it.

With shaking hands, she pulled her wand out to clean the toilet, pointed it out the door to vanish whatever was left in the cauldron. She didn't much care what became of her experiment anymore. She pushed herself up slowly and stood in front of the mirror. She looked awful: pale and clammy and very much a nineteen year old girl, not at all old enough to be suspecting what she thought she was suspecting.

She looked terrified.

Her movement slow and unfocused, she brushed her teeth in the sink and tried to comb her hair with her fingers, but she couldn't do anything about that look on her face.

She disapparated, landing straight in Marlowe's bedroom. It was only there when she saw it on the clock that she realized it was almost one AM. She didn't know how long she'd sat on the bathroom floor.

Marlowe was asleep, or at least, he had been asleep until the crack of her apparation had woken him up. Groggily, he opened his eyes, peering at her in the dark.

"There she is," he murmured, reaching out to pull the covers back for her.

Caiti was still in her jeans and sweater, still had her shoes on. She didn't sit down.

"I just— I just threw up," she said. It was the only words she could think to use to explain why she'd shown up here so late.

Marlowe started to sit up, a frown of concern forming on his forehead.

"Are you sick? Do you need something?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. I don't know. It might have just been the smell of the potion I was making. It might've just made me nauseous."

Marlowe considered her, still standing there, fully dressed. She wondered if he could tell how much her hands were still shaking. He could probably hear it in her voice.

"I get the feeling you don't think that's what it is, though," said Marlowe.

Caiti shook her head. Tears started to burn behind her eyes again and she folded her arms and looked away from him. Marlowe got out of bed, but instead of asking more questions, he went to his dresser and pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that were probably twice the length of her legs.

Caiti pulled them on and climbed into the bed without saying anything. She curled up on her side, hiding her face in her arms.

She felt the bed sink next to her and then Marlowe's hand was on her back.

"My period's late," Caiti whispered.

"Hmm?" asked Marlowe.

"My period is late," Caiti said a little louder. She uncovered her face and looked at him. "What if I'm pregnant?"

Marlowe went very still.

The tears Caiti had been fighting back started to spill over.

"Do you... do you want to... I mean, should we get a test or something?"

"No," Caiti said quickly. "No, I don't want to know."

Marlowe had gone blurry behind all her tears.

"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay, that's fine." And then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her on the forehead.

Caiti said nothing else all night. She cried herself right to sleep and Marlowe held on to her the whole time.

—-

Marlowe's arms were still tight around Caiti the next morning when they both stirred at the sound of the neighbor's dog barking in the yard. He loosened his grip a little. Caiti rolled onto her back and covered her face.

He didn't know what to say to her. She didn't seem to know what to say to him either.

He hadn't slept very much after she'd shown up. Maybe a few minutes here and there, but mostly he had lain awake thinking.

Could she really be pregnant? It didn't seem possible, although he knew it was perfectly possible. But she was so young. They weren't at that stage yet.

His gut kept saying she wasn't, that it was just a scare, that everything would be fine, but seeing Caiti lay there so still, her hands over her eyes, he didn't know how to say so, or even if he should. He didn't know what the right thing to say was.

Minutes and minutes passed in silence. He listened to the sound of her breathing and scoured the depths of his brain for something to say that would be helpful or that might at least make her feel better, hoping all the while that she would say something first.

"What can I do?" Marlowe asked finally. "To make you feel better?"

She shook her head, but didn't uncover her face. "I don't know," she said. "Nothing."

"Caiti, look at me," Marlowe said, turning onto his side to face her better. She shook her head again.

Gently, he reached out and lifted her hands away from her face one at a time. He hadn't realized she was crying again until he saw the silent tear tracks on her cheeks, fresh tears settling into the curve of her nose or hanging on near her chin.

"Listen," he said, brushing the tears away with his thumb. "It might be nothing. But if it's not... we'll figure it out. You've got me. No matter what."

"I know," she whispered.

"Are you sure you don't want to just find out?" he asked.

"No," she whispered. "Just give it a few days. Maybe my period will start."

"How long?" Marlowe asked.

"I don't know," she said, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes looked so busy. "Maybe a week."

"Okay," he said. "A week. And then we'll find out. If we need to."

"But it's probably nothing," Caiti said, echoing his words.

"It's probably nothing," he agreed.

—-

Over the next week, Caiti's work came to an almost complete halt. She rarely went to the greenhouse, and when she did, she brought Marlowe with her, quickly tended to her plants, and then left again. She had to work twice, but otherwise, during the day while he was at training, she went for long walks to try to clear her head, but it was no good. She could focus on nothing but her own predicament, and despite Marlowe's gentle urging that she just get a test and be done with it, she couldn't bring herself to do so.

It felt too permanent, too sure. While there was still a chance that she was only panicking, she felt better. Not good, not okay, but better.

Marlowe spent every second he wasn't at work with her, and he was especially sweet and attentive. He took her out to dinner twice, bought her a book to read while he was at the field since she wasn't spending much time on her research, and every night, he rubbed her back until she fell asleep.

The full moon was that evening, but he hadn't complained once about any of the usual ailments. His focus seemed to be entirely on her.

Marlowe was off work that day, so he sat with her all day long while she brewed seven batches of the wolfsbane potion and one batch of her imperfect attempt at an improvement.

She'd tried to talk him out of taking both, insisting he should just wait until she'd fixed it, but he really wanted to know if they would work together. He kept saying she didn't seem to realize what a big deal it was that he hadn't transformed. That it would be worth it to know if the potions worked simultaneously and that if they did, it could be a temporary fix while she kept trying to develop something that accomplished everything in one.

Mostly, Caiti got the feeling he was trying to give her something else to think about.

They'd agreed that tomorrow they would go get a test and she'd been a nervous wreck ever since. Had she not had an entire day's worth of potions to brew, she'd probably have spent the entire day crying.

That evening, he went back to the medical research center. Three of the other participants from the first trial had returned as well to test both potions together. Caiti felt slightly better knowing he would at least be safe here, monitored by healers who could intervene if something went wrong, but it still made her nervous. She had tried to study what might happen, but it didn't feel like enough.

Marlowe gave her a long, long hug before she left, but they both kept quiet.

"I'll see you in a few hours," he said when he finally let go of her. Caiti could only nod.

After she left, she'd gone back to his house, not hers, curled up in his bed and tried so hard not to think, but her mind wouldn't stop fixating on what they were supposed to do the following morning. She was so scared it made her stomach hurt.

Or at least, for thirty minutes or so, she thought that was why her stomach hurt.

Suddenly, another idea occurred to her, an idea she had never once been so excited by. Cramps.

Caiti sprang up and headed to the bathroom attached to Marlowe's bedroom, and when indeed she found that her period had begun at last, she put her face down in her hands and cried.

—-

In the morning, Caiti was awake and waiting for him. She'd gotten a glass of water from the kitchen, put it on his bedside table, and then sat back in bed, leaning against the headboards. "My period started," she said breathlessly, as soon as Marlowe arrived back home. She was so relieved at her own good fortune that she forgot to be relieved that he was even alive, something she'd been worried about, though not with the same amount of gusto she might normally have worried about mixing two potions together.

"Really?" he asked, sitting beside her.

"Last night," Caiti said. And then she started to cry all over again, feeling a bit like she'd been transfigured into a leaky faucet lately.

Marlowe pulled her into a hug, resting his chin on top of her head. "I told you it'd be okay," he said. "Everything's fine. We'll just be more careful from now on, so you don't have to worry."

"I know," she said. "I know. I'm so relieved."

But then she sucked in a deep, shaky breath and added. "But I think I feel a little bit sad, too."

Marlowe seemed to falter. "Sad?"

"I guess I just started to picture it a little," she said. "And I know I— it's not the right time. It's better this way. But I guess I just—" she stopped again, held him a little tighter.

"Caiti, you'll be the best mum," he said. "When we're a little older, and it's something we're ready for. You'll be the best mum ever."

Caiti squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears kept on coming. She felt silly for crying, silly for feeling sad something she had dreaded would happen hadn't, in fact, happened.

But it was nice to think about — her and Marlowe and a little family of their own, someday in the future.

"Caiti," Marlowe said after he'd been holding her for several minutes. "It worked."

She lifted her head to look at him.

"It worked," he said again. "Both potions together."

Caiti's eyes weren't just sparkling with tears now.

She kissed him, placing her hands on either side of his face.

"I'm gonna make it better," she told him. She kissed him again.