Even the sun felt different under a free sky. It was preposterous, of course, since Hogsmeade was hardly a world away from Hogwarts— barely more than a handful of miles— but Ophelia still couldn't help close her eyes and tilt her head to embrace it. It's soft, warm fingers ran down her arms and the wind tugged at her hair like an old friend.

She never wanted to move again.

A hand patted her once on the shoulder and Ophelia reopened her eyes just in time to see Tom stride past her to direct the others. Eventually, when she'd absorbed her fill of the scenery from that first step out the tunnel, when she'd memorised every last leaf that littered the ground and the dew drops that clung to them, she followed after at an easy pace. Seeing them all head into the Three Broomsticks made an apprehensive shiver roll down her spine, despite being anything but cold. It seemed too bold, going in there. What if it got back to the professors?

Tentatively, she pressed her hands against the rough-worn door and entered to the sound of soft tinkling of bells. Several of the others were already pressing two tables together in the back, much to the annoyance of the man at the bar. Suddenly, a young girl, so small Ophelia hadn't seen her standing beside the barkeep, ran up to her.

"Well?" the girl demanded, placing her hands on her hips just above where her dress flared out at a near ninety degree angle, filled nearly to the breaking point with fabric and painfully vibrant tulle. "Don't just stand there letting the air out. Sit down already!"

Over the child's shoulder, the man hollered, embarrassed, "Rosie, stop antagonizing the customers!"

She huffed and stomped back over to the person Ophelia presumed to be her father. "I told you to stop calling me that! I'm not a kid anymore..."

"You'll always be a kid to me, Rosemerta," he said fondly, ushering her into the back, where she couldn't cause anymore trouble.

Ophelia slipped into a stool at the front, content to just observe for awhile.

"What'll it be?" the barkeep asked, reaching for a glass.

"No, nothing for me,. I don't have any money." She never needed it, stuck at Hogwarts year round, nor had it been much use in the less than legal nature of her upbringing. "Thank you, though." It struck her then, how inconsiderate it was to take up space there when she had no intention of buying anything, so she made to leave. There was still so much of Hogsmeade left to explore before they returned to the castle. It would have been criminal to waste it indoors anyway.

"Would you watch where you're going?" Fenella snapped, and only Ophelia's classically conditioned response to sensing a threat to her life that allowed her to swerve to the side just in time to avoid a collision. Fenella was certainly a threat worthy of such an overreaction, as far as Ophelia was concerned. At least the snake couldn't hold a grudge the way Fenella could.

"My bad," Ophelia apologised with a shrug, although she had a shrewd suspicion Fenella was the one at fault for the near-mishap. Surely that was just the paranoia speaking.

"Going so soon?" Fenella asked, nodding to the door.

"That's the plan."

"Well, you shouldn't."

Ophelia wasn't sure she'd heard correctly. Perhaps she'd imagined hearing the last two letters, unless "shouldn't" had recently attained a double-meaning equating back to "should".

"Come again?" she asked.

Fenella wrinkled her nose in disgust, like she was being forced to explain something extremely simple to an insect, and not a particularly smart one at that. "I'll never understand what he sees in you."

The words just slipped out, it seemed, against Fenella's control in that clipped way of hers.

"Right." Ophelia drew out the word several times it's normal length, just for something to say as her eyes darted around for a means of escape. Even though she wasn't stupid enough to not guess who Fenella was referring to, the concept of playing dumb was suddenly very appealing. "I think I'll just..." She nodded vaguely towards anywhere else, letting her words trail off.

"You know," Fenella side stepped, blocking Ophelia's attempt at a retreat, "I've been his friend for years." She clenched her fists. "Think of how I felt. I've loved Tom since the first time I saw him, at the sorting ceremony. I was sure he'd realize that it was me he needed- who would do anything for him- but then you come out of nowhere and all of a sudden he can't take his eyes off you long enough to remember I exist!"

As Fenella's voice rose, Ophelia's heart sank, until, frantically looking around, she grabbed Fenella by the arm and forced her outside, ignoring all protests. Abduction or not, if she was on the cusp of some sort of embarrassing breakdown in the middle of a public place, Ophelia knew she'd want someone to intervene, even her bitterest enemy. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, she dropped her hand, sighing, "Okay, no point delaying the inevitable. Let it all out. Tell me what a deplorable misery I am to know. I'm waiting."

"Is this all some kind of joke to you?"

Ophelia blinked, puzzled. She'd been trying, unsuccessfully apparently, to be sincere. It wasn't her fault it might have come out sounding sarcastic.

"No, no jokes. Not this time." When Fenella still looked apprehensive, Ophelia grudgingly continued, "Look, I'm sorry." It couldn't have been easy watching someone you love fall in love with someone else, even if it wasn't, strictly speaking, true. "I'm sorry that you feel that way, but you're wrong. Tom... he doesn't like me like that... We have a special arrangement, that's it. I doubt he likes anyone that way."

Ophelia didn't add the addendum to that: And I don't think he ever will. It seemed too cruel in that moment, although perhaps it was crueler to give Fenella hope.

"Of course you'd say that," she laughed humourlessly. "The worst part of it is, I just can't understand why everyone so eagerly adopted you into the fold. I mean, you cursed me, remember? And Tom still kept you around. He ordered me not to retaliate, but of course I did anyway. I'M NOT THE VILLAIN HERE!"

Ophelia flinched. "No one said you were."

"I know everyone hates me, so don't try that!" she snapped. "Even my friends began turning against me the longer you stayed around. I- I know I was a jealous witch at first, but I loved him so much, for five whole years and couldn't understand why he didn't see me, then you're around for what? A few months? And suddenly he's oh-so-different. You're not even from our House, for goodness sake!"

Not sure of what to do or say, Ophelia just stared dumbly. No amount of consoling would make Fenella feel better, and any attempt would seem like an insult anyway.

"I must seem like that wicked girl from a fairytale that does her best two keep the two heroes apart," Fenella sniffed, collapsing against the side of the building. "In another story, perhaps, I'd be the girl the charming boy falls for, huh? The close friend who stuck by him from the beginning, who warded off the evil temptress that tried to turn everyone against her... But no, Tom never liked me like that. You didn't change that much," she finished bitterly.

She sighed, drained now that she'd exhausted her anger.

"Would it make you happy..." Ophelia swallowed, forcing the words out, "if I left?"

Even as she said it, she wasn't sure if it was an offer or not. Was she really willing to go to satisfy this girl who'd put so much time and energy into making her life difficult? It surprised her what a large portion of her was actually willing. Hogwarts was a safe haven, yet so too was it a prison. She'd hate to leave her new friends, if she could claim they were as much, especially Tom, but she would.

"You honestly mean that, don't you?" Fen asked, laughing bitterly into her hands. "Good Lord, I truly despise you. I just wish you'd make it easier."

"I'll.., er... work on that." She shifted restlessly from foot to foot. "Sorry."

"Don't you hate me, too?" Fenella pressed, a rare crack of vulnerability in her voice. "I got a group of my friends to help me teach you a lesson, after all."

Ophelia chuckled softly at the memory, even though nothing about it was funny in the slightest. "No, I don't hate you."

"Why?"

She counted the clouds in the sky, debating how to respond. The truth was hardly flattering, but she lied so much about so many things, she didn't want to waste one on something so relatively trivial.

"Hate... takes a lot of energy."

"You're saying I'm not worth the effort," Fenella concluded shrewdly.

Ophelia didn't deny the charge. "I'm not worth the effort, either. Trust me. I mean, it's flattering that you put so much work into despising me, truly, it is, but the one who suffers the most for it certainly isn't me. It's you. You deserve better than that."

"No," Fenella decided, thoughtful. "I don't want you to leave. I'm not that selfish, unfortunately." She stood up, brushed off her robes, wiped all residual tears in her eyes, and affected a business like air. "It would never have worked out with Tom, anyway, even if I was too blinded to see it. My parents would never have accepted someone not among the Sacred Twenty-Eight. I think I'd better be getting back. Who knows what that idiot Rabastan is up to without my supervision."

She pulled open the door just as Tom strode out it, pointedly not looking at him. After she'd gone, he remained in the doorway, stating simply, "I thought we agreed you'd stay close, where I could see you."

He can't keep his eyes off you, Fenella had said. At least Ophelia knew where that insecurity came from, she supposed, even if it didn't ease her guilt.

"Yeah, that was a special case, I—" Her voice cut off. The smoke came so sudden, like drops of ink diffusing through water, Ophelia couldn't so much as see her hand stretched out in front of her, reaching desperately. "Tom? Tom!"

She recognised this smoke. Sometimes, she saw it clouding up her dreams and imagined it filling the corners of empty rooms. Then, with a jerk behind her navel, she felt herself being Apparated away against her will, one hand clamped over her forearm and another tight on her outstretched wrist.