Love Potion

Every Wrong Way

I couldn't bear the shame. I carried it, it cloaked me like a costume that I couldn't shake. It strickened my throat and stomach and hissed in my ear.

The lesson had ended five minutes ago. I hadn't been able to concentrate, however. I only squeezed my eyes from my hands when the vial went round to that horrible, snoot-faced, white-haired villain, but of course, that ridiculous face did not twitch a vein as he sniffed the potion (as if he didn't particularly care for it, but was only doing so because he had to) and passed it nonchalantly along.

Of course he wouldn't give me anything. Of course his twisted soul would be covert as ever, and I would never know what he smelt in that potion, would never know what made that dull-faced gargoyle smile, what made him love, what made him dream. I would never know, because he would never let anyone know, because that was who he was, because he lived behind a thousand walls and a hundred masks and nobody could bear to peel them because of his defence of a deathly face and rotten humour.

And still his fragrance swam in my bottle of love, however much shame it brought me and however much I detested it and however little he cared.

There was something wrong with me. I was desperate, and I clung that feeling to the boy I had always doted for, despite now knowing he was nothing less than a rascal. I needed to satisfy this feeling - and I knew just who I needed for it.

I didn't want to go to next lesson, anyway. It was study of magical creatures, and the detestable he would be there; I couldn't bear it.

So I didn't. Instead I went looking for my guardian angel - looking for my poor, dead, marvellous Fae.

I had no idea where she would be; it always seemed to be her who found me, and not the other way round; I wondered aimlessly.

The corridors were crowded with students hurrying two and fro, a wash of white shirts, for cloaks had been ditched in the spring heat, and I seemed to float through them like a stick in a canal. It was like I shrunk, and I could just scritter through the forest of trampeding legs.

Then I noticed it again. On the wall, just beside me, was a tiny, black, glistening door. Like the one I had seen the night I got stuck on the step, like the one in Viper's room! I had almost forgotten all about them! What on earth were they? What were they for? And they seemed to come and go - I certainly didn't remember seeing them down this corridor before! Feeling a loss of things to lose, and with a  sudden knowing of where this door would take me, I reached my hand to its tiny, dwarf-sized knob, pulled it open, and concealedly squeezed through.

I seemed to fit perfectly, though before it'd seemed so small. The door took me from that crowded hall to an dark, empty classroom in the space of a wall, although seeing the room that it was, in was in a whole different wing of the classroom. This was a stuffy room lookng out into the greenhouses, when just a second ago I was in a heavily windowed corridor coming out from the Great Hall.

And then I saw a glitter of purple, and then I saw her: Fae was slouched right behind the teacher's desk, her feet up, half-recognisable in the darkness. Totally mesmerised that the door had taken me to the other side of the castle, and just where I wanted and thought it would go, I bowled through it and landed in a crump on the floor.

Then, "Cosmo!" Fae shrieked.

Dizzy, forgetting the door immediately, I stumbled upward and rushed immediately to her, already leapt down to come to me - I wrapped my arms around her and she returned so in a really revivifying hug. I was ready to cry all my woes when I remembered her secret and tore away from her.

"Fae - do you know who you are?" I blurted.

She looked at me with the height of quizzicality. "Uh- Fae? Beautiful queen? Glorious girl?"