Paper Confines

xxviii. Then Let It Be

PAPER CONFINES.
28. / Then Let It Be

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The Plan, as it were, was not as much a plan pocked with holes as it was a massive hole that (if you looked inside and squinted) might contain a plan somewhere. Nadya went over it in bed regardless, her old wizard's chess set splayed across the quilt like artillery on a sand table, a dead knight between her teeth as she mused.

She had pondered plenty of potential distractions to escape the dinner, and had somehow had even more shut down by Colette, who had taken to guessing what Nadya was going to come up with next and preemptively telling her no.

"Come with me," Colette said the next morning, now with two days to come up with a solution, and Nadya, whose eyes were barely keeping open at the back of Transfiguration, stared at her.

"What?"

"It is Ravenclaw versus Gryffindor today, and Alex is sick."

Nadya pretended not to be offended at being second choice to Zippel, which wasn't very hard because being any choice at all was a ludicrous idea.

"I hate Quidditch."

"I know." Colette frowned. "You would be a good beater, I think, if you would ever try."

Nadya assumed levity but she was looking at Colette like she had hit her head one too many times on the door frames around the castle, which she realistically could have. "It's seventh year. I might be a bit late."

"You could come to one game."

"No, I—" Nadya sniffled and scribbled something Dumbledore's stand-in had said twenty minutes ago as if it were new information. "I don't think I can. Sorry."

She was saying that word a lot.

The conversation ended there, Nadya ate lunch with Claude, and Colette attended the game alone.

Most of the Great Hall was empty when Nadya returned again for dinner, and she felt like a complete dolt eating at the Ravenclaw table with Head Boy Ozanich and her face buried in a Potions textbook that wasn't due until after Christmas break.

She ate jacket potatoes and probably looked morose.

"Please don't start crying into your dinner."

Nadya glared at Claude. "You wish I would."

"I do not."

"Whatever."

"I might laugh if you did, but only because of how uncomfortable I'd be."

Nadya did not deign him deserving of an answer.

"It'll be fine, Sidhu."

She glared at him again but couldn't manage meaning it. "Will it? Because it feels like we're two days away and we still don't know how we're getting out of that bloody room. Or am I missing something?"

"You're probably missing something."

"I hate you."

"That's not—I mean there's an answer somewhere and you haven't found it yet. But you will. Or I will, or Colette will."

On that note, the Gryffindor team came barrelling in from the courtyard hooting and cheering and sending a pungent and much appreciated stir of body odor down the hall.

They were so subtle in declaring their wins.

Quickly pulled onto Flynn Golspie's shoulders was Eddie, who was flushed red and damp all over but lit up like none of what he'd confessed to Nadya behind the Quidditch pitch mattered in this moment. She wondered how it felt to have something like that. Captain, they'd supposedly made him. It was strange to imagine that for most people, the natural progression of being good at something was having it recognized.