[greenhouse] dark come soon { shelby }

FEB 2004

It would be pretty easy to say that it was the worst month of Tomie’s life.

At least when she’d caught the snitch and ended the first game of the year — thus solidifying Gryffindor’s first loss for the season — it had been a defendable choice. Aideen had been right there! Better 250 to 280 than 100 to 430! (Needless to say, she’d been saying those numbers a lot in her head for the past couple of months). There was no excuse for last week, though. Hufflepuff had trounced them. Well, trounced her, specifically, seeing as how Gryffindor had been in the lead before the Puff seeker had ended the game. It was really only her that had lost them the game. Which was great! Really! Because Tomie had only wanted to be on the team her entire life or whatever!!

And if that whole fiasco hadn’t ruined her life, there was, of course, the other thing. Tomie didn’t really want to think about that, either; it made her soul want to fold in on itself. After a few months of relative peace with Hazel So, Tomie was at war with her again. Or, at least that was how she saw it. Why had Tomie paused to tease the other girls that afternoon? Why had she needed to prove some kind of Gryffindor-dumb point, and picked dare over truth? Most idiotic of all — why had she kissed Shelby when she’d been dared to?? Only a few days later and Hazel was, of course, telling everyone that she was a Massive Lesbian. Matty Maverick had already started making snide comments to her in Potions class. Tomie wanted to punch something.

She huffed a breath, irritated when the action fluffed some dirt straight back up at her. She’d moved their (heavy!) plant onto the table by herself, but the others were running late, so it was just her and the fat, potted succulent. And the other plants, she supposed. And Professor Ajay, who was around here somewhere. Tomie half believed that woman slept in here, under a big leaf or something…

Her thoughts trailed off as she noticed a figure coming down the hill through the greenhouse glass. It was a little rainy outside and they didn’t seem to have an umbrella, but — more of note to Tomie — it was clear that they were alone. She'd come here by herself, which was pretty weird honestly, since she rarely went anywhere herself, but she'd half expected the others to appear together. Just Shelby? Tomie glanced over her shoulder, wondering where that teacher was. She hadn’t been one on one with the Ravenclaw girl since, well before. Shit.

“Hey Shelby,” Tomie said, holding up a hand to wave as the door opened. She just knew that she wouldn’t be able to look at her without feeling mad, and she’d been right. She tried not to think of the kiss, or the fact that it had been Shelby’s cousin who’d clipped her with a bludger at the start of last match, or that it had been Shelby’s other cousin who’d snatched the snitch out from… Well, not under her seeing as how she was on the other side of the pitch and all, but, well, whatever! It wasn’t Shelby’s fault that Tomie was rubbish at quidditch and had ruined her life! It wasn’t Shelby’s fault she’d kissed her! That was it!

“No Benny?” she asked with a slight grimace.

It had been --

warm / wet / tastes of candy hearts and chocolates / like a hug / like a blanket / like dropping from a broom / like Apparating / too long / too short

-- weird. It had been weird, kissing Tomie Vos. Shelby couldn't stop thinking about how ( nice / scary / strange ) weird it had been. It was distracting her from schoolwork, it was distracting her from running her club (not that it was particularly popular), it was distracting her from everything.

It probably wouldn't be occupying so much of her brain if Tomie would just look at her, though. That was the worst part. They had been laughing before, before Hazel had dared Tomie to kiss her. The air had gone cool and tense before their lips touched, and after -- well. Shelby could still hear Hazel's shrieks, could still see the anger forming on Tomie's face as she turned away.

It had seemed like it wasn't about her, that maybe being there was making it worse. Shelby had muttered something about talking to Tomie later and slipped away, running back to Ravenclaw Tower and curling into a corner between an armchair and a bookcase until she could breathe properly again. In and out, in and out. Deep breaths, like if she were rowing across heavy water.

And then Tomie had started avoiding her, shifting to sit on the other side of their group when it was all of them together, turning Benny and JR into some sort of wall between them. Shelby didn't know what to do with that -- she wasn't a Gryffindor, she couldn't just cut across the circle or hop down a desk in potions and ask why Tomie was avoiding her. She had checked the stars, for some planet to explain her friend's behaviour, and came up empty. Maybe they weren't friends anymore?

And if they weren't friends anymore, then was Shelby still friends with JR, and Benny, and Bren, and the boys? Was Shelby alone, now? It was beginning to seem like it. The same rumours swirling around Tomie were forming a miasma around Shelby, too, though a little lighter -- Hazel targetted her vendetta.

Shelby was too distracted to grab a rain-robe or umbrella in the morning, too distracted to realize it was drizzling until Shelby was halfway down the hill to Herbology. She left a little early from the group -- not that anyone seemed to notice -- to get to Herbology before the rest of them, hoping that the brightness of the greenhouse would do something for her morose mood.

Her boots squelched in the muddy path, the hood of her robe heavy with damp as Shelby clutched her bag to her chest, trying to keep it dry. She was looking at the ground, not ahead of her, when she pushed open the door to the greenhouse. Maybe Professor Ajay was there, maybe she could ask a few questions from the last lesson --

Hey, Shelby.

Tomie sounded distant and cold, to Shelby's sensitive ears. "Hi," Shelby mumbled, trying not to meet Tomie's eyes while she maneuvered to her station. She pulled the hood of her robe down, undoing the clasp at her neck to hang it up near the entrance. No Benny? "Oh, uh, no, they're all--" she wondered briefly if she should say who they were, before reasoning, of course, Tomie already knew, "--still in the Great Hall. Teatime." It wasn't much of an explanation for why Shelby was here alone, though.

There was an awkward silence, heavy and oppressive. "Um." Shelby cleared her throat, second-guessing what she was about to say even as it escaped her lips. "I'm, sorry?" It came out a question -- Shelby cringed. "I'm sorry, for causing you problems. Maverick is being stupid."

Tomie frowned when Shelby apologised; it sounded like a question, but Tomie knew immediately what she was referring to. She’d prefer her to say nothing about it at all. “Ugh,” she said, latching onto the second part with an agreeing eye roll. “I could smash his face into a million little pieces.” Again, she finished internally. Her vague and blurry memory of punching Matthew at camp had been getting a workout these past couple of days. It was all she could do not to repeat the whole thing every time he so much as looked her way with that smug little ferretty expression of his. She couldn’t even turn around and rub the fact that he had only made reserve in his face, either, now that she’d totally screwed the whole Gryffindor team by being utterly useless!

The shitty thing — no, actually — one of the shitty things, was that Tomie didn’t even think Hazel meant what she’d been saying. Her impression was that the Slytherin girl took it all as more of a gleeful game than exciting, true gossip to be shared. Thinking about Hazel made her want to punch something too, though, and Tomie didn’t have a comforting memory of committing violence against her to distract her, so. She should probably think about something else.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving a hand, a little dirt under her nails already. “It’s my fault. Stupid Gryffindor-brain, you know, can’t back down from a dare.” She rapped her knuckles against her head a couple of times, imagining the sound echoing due to the lack of substance between her ears. It was a joke, but her smile wasn’t as easy and carefree as it usually would be. “Guess we should start harvesting the juice or whatever without Benny,” she commented flatly, glancing at the fat succulent on the table in front of her. She didn't really want to sit here for some unknowable amount of time with nothing to do with her hands.

Tomie hopped down from her stool, making her way to the small pile of tools conveniently left at the end of one of the tables. "Has Maverick said anything to you?" she asked, not looking in Shelby's direction. She wondered if beating him up would make her look more or less gay.

Tomie said not to worry about it, which of course made Shelby worry about it more. That wasn't forgiveness for kissing her back, which is what she needed to hear. Her fingers curled into her palm, nails pressing into the flesh there until it hurt. "Mmm," she mumbled in agreement. "S'why I only ever pick truth." Typical Ravenclaw scaredy-cat, she was. They should get started on the juice -- Shelby nodded, setting her bag on the stool. "He'd get it all on his shirt, anyway." It was a sad attempt at a joke, but Shelby was sad, so it was the best she could do.

"Maverick doesn't really talk to me, you know?" Shelby said, looking determinedly at her sleeves as she rolled them up and not at Tomie. If Tomie looked at her, she would see through Shelby's lie of omission -- yes, Matthew Maverick didn't really talk to her, typically. But in the last few days there had been looks, and snickers that didn't quite die out when Shelby turned to look where they were coming from. It wasn't as bad as what Maverick was saying about Tomie, sure, but.

But it took two people to kiss, didn't it? And Shelby was sure she heard some colourful words, just on the edge of her hearing, about her, too. She had looked one up in the dictionary and had felt sick afterwards. She wished that Tomie would beat up Maverick again, though she didn't say so. It would make things easier for both of them if his lip was swollen shut.

She slipped out her notebook and a few empty vials from her bag, laying them out on the workbench while Tomie grabbed the tools. She wondered if she should mention that, maybe it wasn't? So bad? To be called a lesbian. Kitty's mums seemed to do fine, to hear the other Gryffindor tell it. But maybe not while Tomie was holding sharp things.

It couldn't be so good, though, if Hazel's rumours could make Tomie avoid her like this.

She pulled a blade from the succulent, folding it in half as Professor Ajay had shown them. The juice held to the membranes inside -- Shelby reached for the rolling pin, passed a vial to Tomie. "Um. I guess, the boys probably know?" Drop it, Trickett! She bit down on her lip. "Sorry. Can you pass the forceps."

“I couldn’t do that,” Tomie replied, a little amused for real this time. She’d stumbled across their little game of truth and truth (ha), and had to poke some fun at them all for being wusses. Naturally, she’d had to pick dare to prove… something. And then she’d had to actually do the dare once it had been dared. In the moment, backing off had felt like a worse outcome. But now? Well, maybe she’d do things differently.

Her sentence applied more generally, too, though. She couldn’t remember picking truth in her life.

She nodded. “Oh, right.” That made sense. Tomie and Matthew had actually kinda been friends in first year, which was wild when she thought about it. Now, at twelve and five sixths, she was much wiser and more mature. She had better judgement! Or well, better judgement about who to hang around at least. She dumped a few things on their table, holding onto the gardener’s knife in her left hand. When she was back atop her stool, Tomie twirled the knife absentmindedly. She was still kinda mad at Benny for not being here (yet?) but, okay, it wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined.

She took one of Shelby’s vials, inspecting it but not really paying attention. “Yeah, I told Benny right after,” she said, putting the knife down and handing Shelby the tool she’d asked for. She pulled the stopper from the vial, leaning in a bit to catch whatever she needed to with it. “He gave me a chocolate bar.” Tomie knew that the school didn’t revolve around who she had or had not kissed, but it certainly felt like everyone knew. Then, maybe she was just overthinking it. People made jokes about other people being gay all the time, right? Two men kissing, ha, funny and weird! She tried not to grimace, but a little slipped out.

“Your cousin was Gryffindor quidditch captain a few years ago, right?” she asked, plopping her cheek in her right palm while her other hand wiggled the little glass vial under where Shelby was working. She knew Freya Trickett had been captain — she’d sent her a letter too, even though she didn’t play professionally. Quidditch was better to talk about than the other stuff, though. Especially with Shelby; she didn’t quite understand how awful Tomie felt about it all, or how badly she’d been fucking up.

Tomie kept spinning the knife in one hand. Shelby swallowed, eyes following the reflection of the blade in the filtered greenhouse light. She wasn't actually scared of Tomie with the knife. Knives were slightly scary, but in a way that just meant you had to be careful with them. Tomie wasn't the most careful person, but if the blade flew at her, it wouldn't be on purpose. Right? The ridiculous, totally unfeasible scenario of Tomie attacking her with the knife wormed into her brain anyway.

She let out a breath when Tomie finally put it down, taking the forceps quickly. "A chocolate bar?" Shelby was envious, and a touch upset -- she'd brought him custard cakes on the train two years in a row now, and no sympathy chocolate for her? Wasn't fair. But perhaps Benny just didn't think about Shelby that much when they were out of each other's vision. Benny seemed like he just -- thought less. Not a bad thing -- Shelby often wished she could do the same.

Your cousin was Gryffindor quidditch captain a few years ago, right? Tomie asked, abruptly changing the subject. Shelby felt surprised despite knowing she shouldn't be. It was difficult to talk about it, and there were all these feelings she couldn't figure out how to untangle into words. Shelby pressed on the edge of the succulent section, using the forceps to guide the sludge-like interior into the vial in slow, slimy threads. "You have to be more specific. I have lots of cousins, and lots of them played Gryffindor Quidditch." Shelby smiled though, eyes still focused on her task when she answered. "Freya was, most recently." She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth, wiggling the forceps as something inside the succulent got stuck. "Do you want to meet her?"

“Yeah.” Benny was a lifesaver, honestly. She shouldn’t really keep being mad at him for not being here. “I was in kind of a bad mood,” Tomie said openly —  it wasn’t a secret. She’d been taken by surprise, and she’d been embarrassed, and where those feelings might have turned to sadness or something similar for someone else, naturally for Tomie it had all been diverted straight into anger. And nothing calmed her like food. “Well it was like three-quarters of a chocolate bar,” she admitted. He might have been eating it at the time. She wasn’t sure; whether by a bad memory or her reluctance to specifically relive that afternoon, she couldn’t really remember exactly how it’d gone down.

“Right, Right,” Tomie said. She didn’t really need to be reminded about the fact that there were ten thousand Tricketts; two of them had demolished her in quidditch very recently, and one was sitting right there. One was on her team!! That was already a Very High Saturation of matching-surname people. Well, Aase had a hyphen surname, but whatever, the point stood. “Oh no, no,” Tomie said, waving a hand and almost prickling herself on the plant before them. She stopped waving and focussed on collecting the gross stuff seeping out of the succulent. She glanced at her friend; Shelby was kind of smiling now — which was nice! And noticing that made her feel like a creep! Cool! She looked back at the slime instead, glad they were talking about quidditch.

“Your family just seems… so quidditchy. It’s kinda cool,” she added, because that was true, even if she didn’t entirely feel like it was a cool thing, right now. What would she give to have a quidditchy family? Tomie thought of JR, but she pushed those feelings away. It wasn't too hard; she'd had to get used to being jealous of her Slytherin friend.

I was kind of in a bad mood, Tomie said. "I know," Shelby said quietly. Three-quarters, though -- sounded like Benny had gotten to it first. That made her feel a little better about the lack of sympathy chocolates. Just a little, though.

She wondered if any of their friends, her friends, Tomie's friends had even thought to check in on their Ravenclaw, though. Shelby bit her lip, feeling all of a sudden very lonely despite Tomie's immediate presence. It was nice that Prefect Fay had sat with her, but it wasn't the same, was it? Maybe Shelby was just the easiest to forget of them all.

Shelby felt slightly ill all of a sudden. Maybe it was the succulent fibers -- they didn't smell all that offensive, but they did have a bit of an odour.

"Are you sure? Freya is really nice, and she's already met Wendy." Shelby tugged another strand of gloop from the blade, stuck out tongue sticking out a bit more, almost touching the side of her nose. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind." Maybe she would like Tomie more than you, whispered a mean, traitorous voice. "But I don't think she plays Seeker?"

"I guess," the Korean witch mumbled. "We're a lot of things, though. So Gringotts-y," because that was Freya and Erika, "so Healer-y," Hal and Brita's boyfriend, "so lawyer-y," that was her parents, "so everything, I guess. There are too many of us." Shelby wondered vaguely if the same could be said for her mother's family, wondered again how her life would be different if Kim were her surname instead of Trickett. "I guess it's cool, though."

She glanced up at Tomie, a little nervous to make eye contact. "You know you're doing really well, right? As seeker." Shelby didn't have a lot to base this on, but she laid out the little evidence she had: "Ingvar is really impressed. Most second-year seekers don't play so well, apparently." Ingvar would know -- for his birthday, he had gotten a book on Hogwarts Quidditch statistics.

“Has she?” Tomie asked, wiping a bit of sap on her trousers before putting the stopper in and giving the vial a little jiggle upside down to make sure it was in tightly. Seemed fine. “Like, after camp, or…?” She glanced back at Shelby, wondering when she and Wendy had gotten close enough to be hanging out outside of school. They did sleep in the same room, and all, but sometimes Tomie got weird vibes when the three of them hung out together.

Or maybe it was just her own stupid feelings she was thinking of. She was glad she could hang out with the blonde girl again without feeling that weird mix of high-but-constantly-on-edge in her chest. “Nah, Freya Trickett was chaser,” Tomie added vaguely, not that she supposed Shelby would really care about that. Tomie knew a lot of weird facts about Freya, even though the blonde hadn't gone professional after school. That was probably weird, too, she thought.

“I think my family’s like that in Jogjakarta,” she said, rolling the R in the way she only did around her friends. And family, of course, but that was a given. “Lots of them, family in every possible Jogja business.” She thought briefly of stalking around Malioboro with her brothers and a bunch of cousins at night, and wondered if Shelby would like the atmosphere. Maybe if she could speak Indonesian, Tomie thought, putting the vial down on the table. She leaned an elbow on the wood, her face in her palm.

“Oh,” Tomie said, nodding, her cheek squishing against her hand, but not really feeling it. “Sure... Guess that’s why they don’t usually pick second-years,” she said, giving Shelby the smallest of joking smiles.

Shelby nodded. "After camp -- Freya is, uh, friends with her brother? So Wendy and her brother were both at the barbecue." Blended in well, Shelby wanted to say, but managed not to. Some of the more distant cousins had thought Wendy was Shelby, and Shelby a friend. That had stung. Still stung. The string of goop burst as Shelby squeezed too hard on the forceps.

"Chaser, right." Shelby nodded, trying not to feel weird that Tomie was a) talking about one of her favourite big cousins and b) knew more about Freya than Shelby did. There were loads of cousins where that wouldn't have bothered her -- Tricketts grew on trees it seemed in Cornwall. But. It was Freya. Freya, who was her big sister, almost, in a way that wasn't quite the same as Aase (who tried, but wasn't big enough) and Soléy (who didn't seem to notice her or the other Ravenclaw Tricketts) and Pixie (who acted younger than she was, the opposite of Shelby) and the other Trickett girls of her generation.

Plus, it always felt weird when they ended up talking about some blond girl. Shelby would have thought it would be different when it was Freya, but it felt really similar to talking about her dormmates Wendy or Wiltrud. Didn't help that Shelby had brought up Wendy, anyway.

"That sounds nice," Shelby said, wistfully. Which made no sense, it was the same as her and the Tricketts here -- except it wasn't the same, wasn't it? Tomie was like her, but Tomie probably fit in with her extended family a lot better than Shelby did with hers.

pale and white and blonde with freckles and norse names looking like angels and no dark hair to be seen

Tomie was joking, but Shelby flushed anyway, wiping her sticky hands on her skirt. "Just means you're more special, right? Since you got picked?"

“Ah, yeah,” Tomie said, nodding. She remembered Wendy talking about her older siblings when they’d hung out at camp. Gryffindory ones, too. The wizarding world wasn’t so big; it all made sense. She kept her relief to herself, though thinking that it was probably creepy and unfair to hope Shelby and Wendy weren’t that close. “Cool,” she said, not knowing what else to say there.

Chaser, yes. Freya and Finn were chaser co-captains together, like Keela and Clem were beater co-captains. Now that she was thinking about it, Tomie was pretty sure there was another Gryffindor-Trickett who played for Montrose. Torrence? Thor? Torstkjafin… something? She couldn’t remember the name, but she made a mental note to check. She was pretty sure he played beater.

The Gryffindor picked up a pair of scissors she’d brought over and started absentmindedly scratching a shoddy little lion into the wooden table. Her cheek was still pressed into her right hand, and she could already feel it was a little sticky. Oops. “Yeah, we should go there,” She said, eyes on the ugly little masterpiece she was making. “One day, like a holiday or something. Food’s so good,” she added. As if on cue, her tummy rumbled just then.

Tomie sort of grimaced at the “special” comment. She’d wanted so desperately to do well and she’d ended up doing sort of the opposite. Once again, she thought about how ridiculous it was that seekers basically made or broke the game. And how frustrating it was that she might never be strong enough to play the position (beater!) that she really wanted to. Special didn’t really feel right, as much as she wanted it to. “Just wish I was doing better, I guess,” Tomie said.