**Author's Note: A bit of a short chapter, as things have been crazy on my end. But rest assured, there will be more soon. Happy reading!!*
CHAPTER TWELVE- Regaining the Past
He may not have been the smartest person in his classes, and he may not have been the first one to come up with a clever answer or retort, but Rob knew there was something wrong with Lucia. She was, after all, the one thing he really was trying to keep an eye on these days.
At first he thought she was just quiet, sitting beside him in the stands, looking contemplatively out on the fields he most often spent his time on, where he'd had most of his strongest emotions. Victory, loss, strength, weakness, joy, even an inanimate sort of love.
Sitting beside her, he thought he could feel them all, mixed and layered and confusing and wonderful.
Then she stood up and given him an absent (sad? Did it look sad?) smile.
"I have to go to class. Today's the day, you know-the class reads my article." Lucia searched his eyes for the flash of unease she'd come to expect, his reluctance for exposure. But there was not so much as a flinch, confirming what she suspected. He trusted her. She'd given him no other choice, and now she wished he would have resisted.
She wanted her objectivity back, but she wouldn't hurt him to get it.
So she ruffled his hair, giving into that one small urge, to touch those unruly red locks, and she stepped down the bleachers away from him, not once looking back.
She paused for a moment at the bottom, the sun and the football field at her face, Rob at her back, and as he looked at both-Lucia and field, backlit by the yellow-white morning light, something clicked in his mind, and he thought Ah, there it is.
But she did not stop. She kept moving, breaking the picture and making him wonder what, exactly, had changed.
~~~
The class was too quiet.
It wasn't that she thought they'd dislike her article-there was really nothing for them to dislike. Her toughest critic had pushed it back to her over his wide desk, smiling down at his daughter with pure and honest pride, so she knew there was nothing to criticize.
But the quiet gave her too much leeway to think.
Rationally speaking, she surmised her current funk would pass.
The only problem was, she had no particular frame of reference. She'd never been with someone before, and she'd certainly never had to deal with her own set of emotions while trying to deal with the dissected, shattered emotions of the remnants of her family.
The silence was broken when someone snickered. Lucia glanced up, unsurprised to find it was the same girl who had ridiculed the idea of an article about Rob.
"Well, this is rather flowery, isn't it?" she asked snidely, crossing her arms over her chest. "You know, I have classes with Rob Wesley, and he's certainly not all you're making him out to be."
Connor glanced from the clearly jealous girl to Lucia, wondering what she'd say. He'd found out some time ago that being the lone male in a group of females gave you several options-he'd taken the option of being silent most of the time, and he found in being silent, he found out a lot.
So what Lucia did next surprised him greatly, in light of what he'd surmised in his silence.
She said nothing. She didn't defend herself, didn't defend her article, and most surprisingly, didn't defend Robert.
She shrugged and looked back down at her notebook.
But it didn't feel objective to Lucia. It simply felt cruel.
She sat still for a few more minutes-how many was it? Two? Ten? Ten thousand? When she could take it no longer, she looked up at the newspaper advisor.
"I think I'm going to be sick," she said, and did not wait for an answer before bolting for the bathroom.
~~~
He waited for her as long as he could, until the coach was yelling at him and the other players were miming checking their watches.
Rob ran onto the field, trying to push it all aside for the sake of the game. She'd probably gotten caught up in something, or just wandered home, not thinking. And it wasn't as though it was any big deal, was it?
No, it was no big deal at all.
So what was different about today than any other day?
Well, she turned in her article today, he thought, absently kicking aside a poorly-placed shot.
That thought sent a noise through his brain, sharp and shrill and altogether unpleasant. His brow furrowed, and for a moment, Rob forgot where he was.
Cover the rings, he thought fuzzily. Fly left to right, fake them out-
A ball flew by him, jouncing the net and catching his attention. His thoughts split into a triad then, to football, to Lucia, and to… his brain tried to call up the word, call up the game he'd been thinking about, some imaginary, dream-wrought game…
"Wesley, pick it up!" the coach roared.
And the fantastical game slipped from his grasp.
So why should she need you anymore? The odd little voice-was that really him? Rob wondered-insinuated, sounding just millimeters away from snickering.
And the completed thought hit him just as he caught a ball, its impact driving into the hard muscles of his stomach-it was harder to say which took more breath from him.
If she's done with her article, what does she need from you?
He hated himself for that thought, hated himself for that doubt-both in himself and in her.
But it wouldn't go away.
Rob thought he might have a few questions of his own.
But for now-
Well, he'd done just fine playing football before she'd come along, and he intended to do just fine after.
~~~
Albus Dumbledore hadn't expected that bringing people together in harmony would cause him so much dissonance.
Not only had he invested a great deal of time and energy holding up the elaborate glamour he'd crafted for his dear students, but he was no forced to expend even more time and energy waving his meddlesome faculty away.
Yes, they meant well, but the old wizard had made it for years and years without a score of mother hens-the image of Severus in chicken feathers did hearten him a bit, though-and he thought he could make it quite well now.
If only his students weren't so continuously Hippogriff-headed.
The Malfoy boy and the Weasley girl-now there was a couple making progress. Dumbledore sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, promising himself he was just resting them, he wasn't going to nap, no matter how tired he'd been lately, how awfully tired…
He yawned as he thought about how sparks would start flaring from the Gryffindor and Slytherin counterparts any time, red and green sparks. But Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood-well, it was almost beyond his not inconsiderable powers to do anything about them.
They were more like embers, but a good strong wind would blow them out.
So he thought he would let them be for the time being, just let them be…
While he rested his eyes.
Fawkes kept an eye on the door, ready to raise the wake-up call if anyone would entreat.