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Harriet Potter didn’t know where to go next.
Caelum held her hand as they walked down the marble steps of Gringotts, thumb rubbing against the ring on her finger. Before leaving the vault, she’d cast the glamour she’d used several summers ago, and Caelum had agreed the illusion was a good likeness.
“Spent a lot of time looking at my face, have you?” she’d said archly.
He hadn’t denied it, only kissed her again.
Now, there were a million worries swirling in her head. Her hand tightened in his. She had to let Archie know what had happened. She’d promised to tell Caelum everything. She had to re-brew the Modified Polyjuice.
Words could wait, she thought. Better to start the Polyjuice base sooner.
“I need to brew,” she told Caelum.
“I’ll take you home.”
“Not there. I — have another lab.”
His eyes narrowed. “At the Guild?”
“No.”
“Aren’t I supposed to have you home for dinner?”
She did remember her mum saying something along those lines. It seemed like it had been days ago, not hours. “I will be. Come on. Let me bring you in on secret layer number 2.”
“Dear Merlin, how many layers are there?” he muttered.
She half-smiled. “Just you wait.”
Caelum came along with her, through the entrance to Knockturn to the Lower Alleys they both knew, and he didn’t let go of her hand. She ignored his continued muttering as they traversed the Alleys and climbed the steps to her apartment on Dogwood Lane.
She swung the door open and did a small twirl in front of her lab setup. “Lab sweet lab.”
“This is an old lady’s apartment.”
“Yes,” Harry said patiently, “but I also set it up for a space to brew anything I oughtn’t be seen with in my family’s lab. And for some other reasons.”
“There are floral curtains.”
She laughed at the disgruntled look on his face. “From the previous occupant. Don’t worry, I couldn’t care less about home decor. I’ll let you have all the imposing black velvet curtains you want when we live together.”
Caelum coughed. “When we live together,” he repeated, and sat down hard on her couch. He looked rather shell-shocked.
She grinned at him. “Get comfy. Let me start the base for the Polyjuice, then we can talk.”
“Absolutely not.” He sprang back up immediately. “Show me your amber trick.”
“Use of stones in potions-making has a long history,” she retorted. “It’s not a trick—”
And then they were off, diving into the Potions discourse she loved so well, as she chopped and ground ingredients for the Polyjuice base. Caelum didn’t hold back on sharing his opinion, acidic as ever, but he stood beside her and took over preparing the bicorn horn. And in-between steps, his hand would reach for hers.
By the time the first stage of the Polyjuice was complete, it was late afternoon, golden sun gleaming through the dreadful floral curtains. The exhaustion of the day was beginning to wear on them both. As Rigel, her routine included many tasks and little sleep. But there was a difference between an average day attending classes, and the mental exhaustion that came from the terror of her secret unveiled, and the crushing relief that came afterwards. She raised a hand to rub her temples.
“Go lie down on the sofa, brat,” Caelum said. “I can watch the potion from here.”
Harry set down her stirring rod and eyed the Polyjuice. It would be at least twelve hours of simmering before she needed to add the next ingredient. “I thought we agreed ‘brat’ wasn’t the best title to use for your fiancée?”
“It’s a term of endearment.”
“A term of endearment. Are you too good for ‘darling’? Or ‘sweetheart’? ‘Love’, perhaps?”
Caelum snorted. “Have we met?” He was still staring at her cauldron.
She gently tugged his arm and led him away. “You don’t need to watch it that carefully. I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do.”
“More compliments?” Harry fake-gasped. “Maybe you should lie down.”
He sniffed. “Lestranges don’t lie on sofas. It’s uncouth.”
She arched an eyebrow wickedly. “Lucky you, then, I do own a bed . ”
He’d been watching her face, not where they were going, and ran straight into the doorframe of the little bedroom. “Fuck!”
“Mm, I don’t think we’re quite there yet.” Harry ran her thumb down the side of his face, past his reddening ears, and kissed his cheekbone where he’d hit the doorframe.
Caelum spluttered. “Harry — Mordred damn it. However improper you barging into my bedroom at Dartmoor was, this is eons less proper.”
“First, this is not my actual bedroom, because I don’t live here,” she said, pulling back. “Imagine it’s a chaise lounge in the drawing room. Completely proper.”
“We would never be in the drawing room unchaperoned.”
She tilted her head. “Am I misremembering? Were we chaperoned in the gardens at Malfoy Manor? In the vault at Gringotts? My, that chaperone must have been scandalized.”
His flush traveled from his ears to the rest of his face. “It’s different, Potter. What people would think—”
“They’ll never know we were here,” Harry pointed out. “And even if they did, we’re betrothed. And even if we weren’t, they’d probably support us getting a head start on the marriage law provisions.”
Caelum opened his mouth, paused, then groaned. “You’re impossible.”
She let it go, stepping away from him and throwing herself backward onto the bed. “It’s what I live for. Wake me when it’s six.” She snuggled under the soft covers and closed her eyes.
Harry heard his footsteps retreating toward the faint bubble of the Polyjuice. A few minutes later, the footsteps came back. The bed next to her squished down. Harry wiggled toward the new occupant, and he put his arm around her. Caelum smelled more like Cleaning Charms and the strange scent of Thief’s Downfall than his usual amber-oakmoss cologne, but Harry knew him regardless. She would have known him anywhere.
When she did open her eyes, he was looking back at her. Slowly, his fingers traced her side, from her waist to the curve of her hips. Harry scooched even closer to him, body pressed flush against his. When she’d proposed their arrangement, in the wake of the marriage law, she hadn’t foreseen that it would ever become real. The intimacy of his touch was still unexpected. Still a thing of wonder, shining as golden as the afternoon light.
She tilted her head to kiss him.
“I thought you were tired,” Caelum whispered.
She kissed down to his neck. “Not that tired.”
His hand came up to stroke her hair. “Then I guess you’re not too tired to start telling me the truth. What is this place really for? Your Polyjuice invention was distracting, I’ll admit, but I haven't forgotten why you needed it in the first place.”
Harry swallowed. “I—”
She needed to tell Archie what had happened. But no matter what Archie had to say, it wouldn’t change the fact that her fiancé knew her true face. It wouldn’t change the promise that she’d made to Caelum, or that they’d made to each other.
She fiddled with the ring on her left hand. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start with the apartment. We’re already here.”
Harry took a deep breath. “If I have to, I’ll tell everyone I’ve been living in this apartment for years, doing a correspondence course to teach myself magic.”
Caelum frowned. “But you haven’t. You’ve been in America.”
“No. I’ve never been to America. I have been taking a correspondence course during the summers.”
“But everyone knows you go to A.I.M."
Her voice shook. “Archie goes to A.I.M. We’ll say there’s a third person — we’ll say that I’ve been in the Alleys while Archie’s in America, but I haven’t been.”
Harry pressed her face into Caelum’s shoulder. She couldn’t look at him when she said the words that had been sharpened into knives. The words that haunted her every step at Hogwarts. The words that she’d repeated into the mirror enough to almost believe them.
“I’m Rigel Black.”
Caelum's hand, stroking her hair, froze.
“I’ve gone to Hogwarts for years, pretending to be Archie. I was the one you met at the gala when you were sixteen. I cured the Sleeping Sickness and ran the SOW Party into the ground. I won the tournament. It was all me."
She’d confessed to smaller crimes before: a thousand little lies. Earlier that day, she’d confessed that she trusted Caelum. With his speech in the Gringotts fault, he'd said he wanted her to be his wife. And she wanted that, too.
After her greatest secret had spilled out of her mouth, in the deafening silence that followed, she had another confession.
“I'm so scared it'll all fall apart,” Harry said into his chest. “And I'm falling in love with you."
She raised her head.
Caelum was staring at the ceiling. His hand was still frozen in her hair. A few more silent moments passed.
"What are you thinking?" she whispered, when she could not take it one more second.
"I'm remembering how I loathed Rigel Black from the moment we met. And that was you, all along, making me look like a fool." He paused. "And I'm thinking about how much you annoyed me as yourself, when we were interns, before we were friends."
"Are…" She didn't know how to ask. "Are we still…?"
He looked over at her again, then, blue eyes intense. "I'm thinking about how you never gave up on me. How I never loved anyone else, before."
"You love me?"
"Obviously, you ninny." Caelum cupped her face. "I told you I'd be on your side no matter what. I told you I wanted to marry you. What more romantic declarations could you want?"
"One more never hurts," she said reasonably.
He rolled his eyes. "I love you, Harriet Potter, even if you spend most of your time committing a felony and pretending to be my male cousin. Is that romantic enough for you?"
Harry grimaced. "Maybe don't put it that way—"
Caelum interrupted her, just like she’d cut him off in the Gringotts vault, with a kiss that took all her words away.
He didn’t seem too concerned with propriety, after that.