Cast yourself (you are the spell)

Chapter 26

Hope watches as Josette takes a deep breath and picks up her dress before walking down the stairs again. The pureblood can't stop herself from stepping back as the girl approaches her.

"You can't seriously be surprised?" Josette says, her mask dangling next to her heels in her hand. Hope eyes it with a lump in her throat. "You tried to pick me up thinking I was someone else!"

"I...I didn't know," Hope tells her, her voice hoarse in all the wrong places. She feels like she might snap into pieces. "I would-I would never have danced with you, if, if I knew."

She sounds desperate, like she's trying to cling onto some misguided faith, and Josette knows it.

"And that's exactly why I..." The muggleborn can't even finish her sentence-the implication is too heavy between them. "You needed to learn your lesson, to see that your beliefs aren't nearly as concrete as you think."

It had all been a trick, then? The other girl had just been playing with her the entire time?

"Learn my lesson?" Hope bristles, blinking away hot tears. Her head pounds with the urge to cry. "We're not in preschool."

Josette laughs sharply, but Hope guesses she's not finding any of this funny at all.

"Forget it." She turns away, and Hope's bottom lip pulls into a pathetic sneer. "You're incorrigible."

Hope speaks up again when Josette's in between the first and second step, her voice liquid gold. The pureblood knows that if she hadn't taken the potion, she would have dropped this entire thing already.

"So, that's all it was?" Josette stops but doesn't look back. "A trick?"

Hope's stomach crunches painfully as she waits for the other girl to reply. It takes longer than expected, leaving her in agony of the answer.

"I..." she murmurs, her voice too soft. Hope can see the strain in her shoulders, the tightness in her neck. "Yes. That's all it was."

Hope grits her teeth, becoming angry with the other girl. It couldn't have all been a trick, right? She hates herself for thinking it, but she could have sworn that they had a connection when they were dancing, at least.

"That's not..." she trails off. What was she going to say? That's not fair? That's not right? No, it certainly wasn't.

"You owe me."

"You owe me," she repeats, not truly knowing where she's going with this.

"Owe you what?" Josette turns around, exasperated, almost bumping into Hope with the sudden movement. She steps back to give herself more room when it doesn't look like the pureblood will give it to her. Hope only follows after her, trapping her in against the handrail with one hand on either side of the other girl.

Hope doesn't immediately reply, her eyes glinting like she's trying to make a decision, her irises clouding over like her thoughts are fighting with each other.

She seems to decide quickly, because then she moves forward and her lips press angrily against Josette's-an anguished, bloody-lipped kiss where Hope can only see gold.

Josette freezes and drops her heels and mask, and if they thud dully against the floor of the common room, Hope doesn't hear a single thing passed the collision of lips. Josette tastes exactly like she had imagined her to-like her favorite type of chocolate frog, and something else in her tangy lip gloss that Hope still can't place.

Josette doesn't immediately reciprocate, though, standing nearly unmoving against her, but not pulling away at the same time. It only serves to make Hope desperate, and she presses more roughly against the other girl, her lips trembling and her spine tingling delightfully.