she showed me all the stars { shelby }

Tomie poured their drinks without a word, just a small smirk on her lips to show she was enjoying herself. It was still a bit too dark, but she only spilled a little liquid. “Sugar? Milk...?” She asked, emptying endless sachets of sugar into her own coffee, looking to see if there was even any milk around. “No milk,” she added, squinting as she tried to read the back of a packet of something that wasn’t sugar. Cream? Ew. She didn’t even bother asking about that.

“Milady,” she said, sliding Shelby’s mug onto the table she was sitting on before going back for her own coffee. She handed Shelby a teaspoon too. With her own teaspoon, Tomie scooped up a little coffee and tried it before going straight in for the rest of the drink (it wasn’t good). She set her drink down before carefully getting up onto the table Shelby was sitting on.

Tomie sighed. "I can't believe it's the last night of camp," she said, still speaking quietly, but no longer whispering. Her tone was a little regretful; at this point, why would she want to leave? Everything had been so intense and fun.

There was a little splash on the table top as Tomie poured the drinks. Shelby looked over her shoulder- there were lights in the distance, but nothing coming their way. And it wasn’t likely that anyone would have heard the slosh of liquid, anyway. “Sugar, please,” she said, lowering her voice just a smidgen anyway. No milk, not that Shelby had wanted any, “Thank you.” She took thé offered cup and spoon gratefully. The tea was a little weak on first taste, but it was forbidden tea! So that was okay.

Shelby resisted the urge to say for you. She didn’t want to make Tomie feel worse about leaving, or make it about her feelings again. She felt stupid for being sad- she had three more weeks to enjoy camp, didn’t she? So why was she full of dread for it? Instead she leaned lightly onto her friend’s shoulder. “It’s been good, though, right?” She tried to keep her tone light. “Plus they don’t have any rice here.”

“So good,” Tomie said, agreeing emphatically. “I’m so glad we shared a room. Was a great idea,” she added, a little playful bragging in her tone. She glanced at Shelby with a half smile. Of course, Benny had been her first choice – it would have been a really fun summer camp if she’d ended up with her best friend. She didn’t even know why they weren’t allowed to share a room, anyway. They were twelve! And Benny was just a friend! Regardless, sharing a room with Shelby had really been awesome, and Tomie felt really close and comfortable with the friend beside her.

"True," she murmured, in response to the rice comment. Not nearly enough rice at Hogwarts, either, she thought. Tomie picked her mug up with two hands and blew across its surface slowly. “We’ll still be this close when we go back to school, right?” she asked casually. She gave Shelby a little nudge with her elbow. “I feel like I could just – ” Tomie waved a hand, her drink sloshing precariously in her other hand as she spoke. “ – tell you anything.” Tomie smiled, then took a sip of her sugary coffee. It tasted disgusting, and she pulled a face before going back for a second sip.

Shelby grinned, wrapping her hands a little tighter around the mug. It had been a little nerve-wracking, asking Tomie if she minded if they roomed together at camp, once it became clear she couldn't room by herself and Tomie couldn't room with Benny. "I'm glad too," Shelby said softly, taking another sip of her tea. It was stronger now. She wrapped the thread of the tea bag around her pinkie finger.

“We’ll still be this close when we go back to school, right?”

Tomie's tone was light, but she was voicing a question Shelby had been wanting to ask for a couple of days now. It was weighing on her, the fear that these past two weeks were just an anomaly in their friendship. That Shelby wouldn't be as important to Tomie when the year began again. "Absolutely," Shelby said, trying to project a Gryffindor-y type of confidence. Anything? She almost wanted to test it, but she didn't really have a good question to ask. "I feel that way, too," she said instead. "Maybe we can do something like this again?" Shelby paused, thinking of another rule she could reasonably break. "Sneak me into the Gryffindor dorm or something. "

With the bitter taste of too-strong cheap coffee on her tongue, Tomie reflected quietly on her own words. What else there was left to share? She had talked about most of that sort of stuff already; she’d told Shelby her biggest secret – her gross name. She’d touched on some stuff that she didn’t really talk about, like pressure from her parents and the older members of her family to be a certain way, or some of the weird feelings she had when she thought about Indonesia as a concept.

Doing so much analysis on The Things She Didn’t Talk About made her a little uncomfortable, though. Tomie was a talker by nature. She wore her heart on her sleeve. But that didn’t mean she was always delving deeply into her feelings; sometimes there were things that she didn’t really want to try to understand. Sometimes she could just feel what she felt without overthinking it too much. Sometimes that was easier. Blinking her way back to the present, Tomie gave Shelby a half-smile in the dark.

"Something like camp?" Tomie asked, still smiling but feeling a little dread at the same time. A lot of her friends had talked about things like sleepovers or weekends away, but Tomie knew her parents would have to be seriously convinced of anything of the sort. It was almost like a game of weighing things up; what was more worth asking her parents for? What birthday parties or camping trips or quidditch matches did she need to miss out on to secure others? "Oh yeah?" she asked, a relaxed chuckle following her words. "Would you really?" Doing stuff at school was easier. "Maybe I can come sneak into yours," she added, teasing a little. The idea was enticing, though; Tomie wanted to see another common room!

"Yes, really!" Shelby bumped Tomie with her shoulder, pretending to be offended. "I'm a real hooligan now, I'll break in anywhere!" It made this sound more like an adventure out of Tomie's comics, breaking in instead of sneaking in. It was a fun persona - the adrenaline had been fun, not thinking twice about her actions had been fun - it was fun to just get out of her own head. Shelby's arms had been getting stronger from rowing, too - maybe she was more of a jock than she thought. Or maybe she wanted to be a jock more than she had thought. A jock, or just more like Tomie.

Tomie was clearly teasing, but Shelby wasn't sure she wanted Tomie in the Ravenclaw dorm. "You'd be bored, I bet," she said, sipping her tea as it cooled. "It's not that cool - lots of tables and books, mostly." And Wendy. Shelby wasn't going to say it - the comic book hour had been weird enough, but the envy was still there. She felt that way about Hazel still, just a little bit. She tried not to think about it too much - after all, it didn't bother her nearly as much when Tomie hung out with Benny or JR.

But neither Wendy nor Hazel knew Tomie's secret name, probably, nor had shared any of their late-night talks about parental expectations and far away island and peninsulas. Shelby sighed. "I wish we could hurry up and learn to Apparate." She turned her head to Tomie. "We could go anywhere, whenever, and do whatever, whenever. Not have to wait for permission to go places, and stuff."

Tomie’s smirk shifted into a grin at Shelby’s words. “You know I thought you were like, a proper Ravenclaw, Trickett, but maybe they put you in the wrong house.” She laughed lightly, then quieted as she remembered that they were supposed to be being stealthy. She sipped on her coffee some more, her mug between two palms, before placing it down beside her. The trip had them both a lot more awake than they had been in their room, at least.

“Don’t you have like, stars on the ceiling or something?” Tomie raised her eyebrows a little. At least the Ravenclaws were in a tower. Sure, she’d love to be near the kitchens – especially if the rumours about sneaking food were true – but she liked having a view of the grounds and other parts of the castle from her tower. “I could hang out with you and Wendy and Wiltrud all the time,” she insisted, thinking that it didn’t sound too bad. “Our brothers are there, though,” she mused, making a face at her friend before grinning again.

“Apparate and accio,” Tomie agreed, counting the two things on a thumb and forefinger. “Going places and bringing stuff to you. What else do you need??” She huffed a sigh. It had been weird being here with all of her friends but unable to do magic.

Shelby's drink sloshed around the mug as she laughed. She was still trying to be quiet, but it seemed less and less likely anyone was going to bust the two of them now. "I wanted to be in Gryffindor, you know," she said after a moment. "But," she shrugged, "the Hat thought different." It didn't seem pertinent to mention that she hadn't wanted to be in Gryffindor before she met Tomie Vos on the train. That didn't seem relevant.

Scrunching her face, Shelby tried to recall the common room ceiling. "I mean, maybe?" This was embarrassing. "It's not like we spend much time looking at the ceiling, you know." Shelby mimed burying her nose in a book, then laughed again. "It's a good view of the lake from the bedroom, though. And the stars." She spent too much time staring up at the sky. Though, now that she thought about it, Tomie probably had the same view from her window.

Her and Wendy and Wiltrud. Shelby nodded. "That would be nice, but Ingvar would definitely be annoying about it." There was a rumor he was up for Prefect next year - she could just imagine his ego growing now. Ara, she didn't know so well, but brothers were brothers.

Accio and Apparation seemed to cover it. "Cleaning charms," Shelby said, thinking. "Doing the dishes by hand stinks."

"Yeah?" Tomie asked curiously. They'd talked about houses right at the start of the year, but Tomie had been about fifty percent sugar and fifty percent adrenaline that afternoon, so she didn't remember clearly what answers everyone had given when they'd talked about houses. She'd wanted everyone to be in Gryffindor because she wanted everyone to be in the same house as her. She laughed. "You're kind of a Ravendor, then – oh! No, Gryffinclaw!" Tomie grinned again, reaching for her cup once more. "Wish we were in the same house, anyway," she murmured with a half-shrug.

Didn’t look at the ceiling much? Yeah, well, that made sense. Tomie couldn’t say what the Gryffindor common room ceiling looked like either – but then, being observant did sort of feel like more of a Ravenclaw thing to her. “Nice,” she said, thinking about her own room’s view. Lots of grass and trees, mostly. And stars, of course, though Tomie didn’t think she was nearly as fascinated by them as her friend was. She just nodded at the mention of Shelby’s brother. She liked being in a different house to her own brothers. Tomie finished her coffee with a few big gulps.

Merlin, the coffee was not good. How did adults drink this stuff all the time?? Tomie supposed she’d thought the same thing about cigarettes when she and Benny had tried to smoke one that one time. Maybe when you turned seventeen you didn’t just lose the trace, but you also lost your mind? Forgot what things-tasting-good felt like? Now that was properly grim.

“Cleaning charms, right,” Tomie agreed with a nod and a look, the prospect of cleaning a whole house by hand forever not appealing very much. “Reparo I guess,” she added, thinking of the window she and Benny had broken a few weeks ago by the astronomy tower stairs, and how they’d tried to “fix” it with “spells”. Thinking back, though, Tomie didn’t mind doing a bit of cleaning; washing dishs by hand was sort of therapeutic. But she wasn’t about to say that, was she? It didn’t really fit with the version of herself that she wanted Shelby – or her other friends – to think of when they thought of her.

Shelby made a face. "Ravendor sounds like a bad Everyflavour Bean flavour." Gryffinclaw was a little better sounding, almost like a magical creature's name. A griffin's claws, or something like that. That was beyond the point, though. Shelby would have wanted to be in any house where Tomie was. She just nodded, taking a big gulp of tea. The liquid was beginning to cool down, and Tomie had just chugged the rest of her coffee. Shelby could smell the coffee. It reminded her of home, of Mum and Dad with morning cups and the Daily Prophet in hand.

She wondered if her parents missed her much, or if they had gotten used to having her away over the last year. Shelby couldn't really remember how things had changed when Ingvar left for school, other than a sudden emptiness in her life as her one designated playmate disappeared from view. She wondered if Tomie felt similarly about her brothers. Then again, Ara was in Ravenclaw. They seemed like very different people, Tomie and her brothers.

Accio, Apparation, Reparo, cleaning charms... Shelby scrunched up her face. "A spell for sending messages, faster than owl post," like if Shelby wanted to talk to Tomie across the towers in the middle of the night. "And - " she stopped, realizing that she could go on like this forever. "I just don't get why we can't use magic outside of school. It's like, what's the point of learning anything if you can't even practice at summer camp for wizards?" She put her cup down and stretched out her arms. "It's not like there are any Muggles here, you know?" She wanted to get up to proper magical mischief with Tomie, like she and Benny must do up in Gryffindor tower.

“Griffinclaw sounds like a good one though,” Tomie joked with half a smile. What would Gryffindor taste like? Something strong, like chili. And lots of salt. Ravenclaw would have more refined flavours, perhaps. A mix of the two might be a good dish… Now that Tomie was sitting, and didn’t feel in danger of being caught anymore, she felt a little sleepy. Her thoughts were drifting, and even though the coffee was disgusting it was also warm; a warm drink in her tummy was comforting in a way not so conducive to staying up all night.

“Like a little mini floo fireplace, or…?” Tomie replied. She glanced Shelby’s way as her friend stretched her arms. The brunette swiped a strand of loose hair behind one ear as she nodded. “You’re so right,” she agreed, rolling her eyes. She and Benny had complained about it together when they’d realised it was a magic-free camp. Well, mostly magic free, anyway – quodpot definitely wasn’t a muggle sport, unless America’s international statute was practically non existent… and then that defeated the point, didn’t it?

She took a couple of brave gulps of her drink and then placed her empty mug down beside her. Then she fished in her pocket for the extra sugars she’d grabbed and ate another one to get rid of the coffee taste. “I don’t even know for sure that I’m not allowed to do magic at home. Like, legally I mean. Obviously I’m not allowed – like my mum has my wand and would literally Avada me if I stole it – but there are heaps of people doing magic all the time in my building, so I think –”

The brunette fell silent immediately as she picked up on a sound from outside. She felt like a dog with pricked ears in the dark, listening out for stray sounds, her eyes on Shelby's. After a moment, she raised her finger to her lips and slid off of the table silently. It could have been, like, the wind or an animal or anything really, but while Tomie knew that nothing really bad could happen to her given that she was leaving tomorrow (aside from her parents being told or something), her protective Gryffindor self wasn't about to let Shelby get in trouble, or get sent home. Tomie crept closer to the window, squinting a little as she looked for movement outside.

"Oh, we gotta go," she whispered, alarm in her voice as she spotted movement.

Shelby had to agree. Griffinclaw sounded like some sort of fun pastry. Wasn't that a pastry, actually? Bear claws? Or Hippogryff claws? Something like that. She imagined a spicy chocolate puff pastry, which was a flavour combination that made no sense but was appealing to her at this moment. She glanced at her watch - it was later now, like almost morning later. Without the rush of adventure, and now with warm drink in her stomach, Shelby was ready to call it a night if Tomie was. Not that Tomie was, right?

A mini-floo? "Um, more like - have your parents ever gotten like, an emergency Patronus from St. Mungos?" Dad had gotten one once - it had been a very loud hedgehog appearing on the dinner table. Shelby was still a little traumatized. "I dunno. Something like that without being so hard to cast." Actually the mini floo thing sounded smarter than her idea. "Or like, a minifloo thing in your watch?" Shelby shrugged. "I don't know. Something."

She took a couple of brave gulps of her drink and then placed her empty mug down beside her. Then she fished in her pocket for the extra sugars she’d grabbed and ate another one to get rid of the coffee taste. “I don’t even know for sure that I’m not allowed to do magic at home. Like, legally I mean. Obviously I’m not allowed – like my mum has my wand and would literally Avada me if I stole it – but there are heaps of people doing magic all the time in my building, so I think –”

Shelby opened her mouth to cite the letter of the law on underage magic but clamped her mouth shut when Tomie stopped talking. There was some cracking noise from outside the cafeteria. Shelby caught Tomie's gaze, suddenly wide and awake again. She didn't need the reminder to be quiet but nodded anyway, slowly sliding herself off the wooden table and following her friend to the window. "Okay," she whispered, trying to see whatever Tomie was seeing. After a moment nothing manifested, but Shelby pushed the door open anyway and slipped into the night after Tomie.

It seemed easier to get back to their cabin. Whatever Tomie had spotted, it wasn't a counsellor. Carla and Schrodinger's-Teddy had long since moved on from the Art cabin, thought shards of broken glass still glinted in the moonlight. But it was just tracing their steps, and soon enough Shelby was closing the cabin door behind them. She looked at Tomie and burst into a grin. "That was wicked." She didn't know if she would be content to just play cards again.

[out, maybe?]

“Minifloo,” Tomie repeated, raising her eyebrows. She’d been imagining a sort of mini fireplace… a small box or bowl of fire that she could sprinkle some floo powder into and then send a note through... or something? That could work, couldn’t it? Shelby’s suggestion of a floo-watch or something was way cooler though. Tomie wasn’t sure where the fire fit into it, but Shelby was pretty inventive. She could probably figure something out.

In no time at all, they were moving again. Tomie made sure to slip a few extra sugars into her pocket, though she didn’t bother to clean up the mess she’d made; there wasn’t time to muck around. The shorter girl led the way back, feeling like a spy again as they crept through the darkness, her friend moving quietly behind her. A part of her wanted to keep exploring; if the door to the food had been unlocked, then what about the door to the art room? The sports room? She wasn’t entirely sure she was done raiding the camp’s many cabins just yet.

But if they were staying up until dawn, then they should still have a couple more hours; it wasn’t like this had to be the end of things. By the time the girls finally got back to their room, Tomie couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. “So wicked,” she replied, practically bouncing from foot to foot, glee evident in her expression. “We're gonna be talking about this forever... The boys are gonna be so jealous,” she added with a light laugh, wondering what Benny and JR were up to right now, thinking that they were probably fast asleep.

Tomie held a hand out in the dark, the teaspoon she'd used to mix their drinks together glinting between her fingers. “A trophy – you earned it,” she insisted, wiggling the spoon for her friend to take, a bright smile on her face. "Thanks for being an awesome roommate this summer, Shelby."

Shelby peered back through the window. She felt like they had gotten away with something - which, obviously, they had gotten away with several things. Being out after hours. Destruction of property. Absolutely crazy, if she stopped to think about it, what the two of them had actually done in the last little bit. SPYING ON THEIR COUNSELORS! That one didn't break any rules, probably, but Shelby still felt like that was illegal to witness.

Tomie's grin was infectious. Shelby was so awake again, almost regretting closing the door to adventure behind them. "The boys could never," Shelby said, with a little bravado from the adrenaline and the late-night delirium. "They're probably snoring right now." It thrilled her to think she did something cooler than Benny, who had shown up to art class with a bloody ear earlier that week and a shit-eating grin on his face. Take that, Rivera.

The silver spoon danced in front of her. "You didn't," she breathed, reaching out for it. She hadn't thought to take anything but their little improvised lamp with them on the run back. She took it in her hand - it was still a little damp from Tomie's coffee. She smiled in the darkness. "Thanks for -" thanks for what? "Everything." She didn't really know where to start, so Shelby went in and gave Tomie a hug instead.

Pulling away, Shelby grinned. "We still have a couple of hours before daylight," she said mischieviously, kicking off her shoes and crawling into their blanket fort from forever ago. "Let's plan our next heist."

[[out, fr]]

Tomie snorted at the image of the boys snoring away in their rooms. The young witch’s smile widened; she still felt bouncy because of all of the mischief they’d gotten themselves into, and even though a teaspoon was just a teaspoon, it felt like something more. A symbol of not just tonight’s adventure, but all of the late night talks she and Shelby had been having. All of their little adventures and hijinks over the past couple of weeks. Had it just been two weeks? It felt like much longer. “No worries,” Tomie said, shrugging the thanks away casually. “Oh,” she said, surprised as Shelby moved in to hug her. A well-natured smile settled on her lips.

It felt good first, and then a little weird, and for the shortest moment Tomie wondered what the normal length of a hug should be, and if where she put her hands on Shelby’s back was normal and okay. But then they were pulling apart anyway and it didn’t matter anymore – only a slightly puzzled sort of feeling remained. Tomie was usually quite a touchy feely sort of person; she hugged or put her arm around her friends and roughhoused with the boys all the time. There usually wasn’t any uncertainty or extra commentary about any of that stuff going on in her head.

But... whatever. The moment had passed.

Tomie grinned, her eyes sparkling despite the dark. “Wicked,” she breathed again, waiting for Shelby to crawl into their blanket fort they’d built earlier. After a moment, she followed, her mind spinning up beautifully planned heists – each one more and more extravagant than the last.

The girls plotted excitedly in the dark until the adrenaline wore off, and then they fell promptly asleep.


/end