LUNAR (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

Thirty Three. The First Presentation.

When Caiti received Marlowe's letter, her initial reaction was to feel angry. Horribly, deeply angry, with a pit in her stomach and a burning feeling in her chest. So he was sorry. Sure. That was going to cut it. He didn't believe the things he'd said. Perfect. How nice and clean and easy to apologize in a letter.

She tried very hard to stay mad about it for several days. She really pushed herself to tear every inkling of sincerity to shreds inside her own brain, but there was a lack of conviction in her anger, because deep down, Caiti wanted that apology to be real. She wanted Marlowe to mean it.

And deeper down, she knew he did.

Marlowe's temper wasn't exactly a surprise. She had known him for years and he was wont to go off on whoever was nearest when something quirked him the wrong way. But he didn't hold a grudge, Marlowe. He never could. He was temperamental, but not unreasonable, and he had always been pretty well clear on what really mattered to him.

Four days after she'd gotten the letter, Caiti showed it to Amelia. She was the only one who knew about Caiti and Marlowe's fight, and she had been surprisingly quiet about the whole thing. She had actually kept the secret. Caiti hadn't expected this. Not too long ago, she had been the one wanting to go spreading around the articles surfacing about Caiti and Marlowe's relationship. She had been chomping at the bit to send in some observations of her own, as a real life close contact. But for some reason, she hadn't this time.

Caiti wondered if it had to do with the way she had stood up for Amelia with Bill back in the fall. She was pretty sure Amelia had appreciated that someone had called him out on his behavior more than she liked to admit. After all, having someone treat her like a secret must have hurt.

Either way, finally having a boyfriend had mellowed Amelia quite a lot, and now she really didn't seem so bad.

Amelia looked at the letter for a good long time like Caiti had asked her to decode some secret message hidden in the letters.

In the end, she didn't say anything about what Marlowe had written, just said, "Are you going to go bring him his potion again?"

"Probably," said Caiti quietly. She couldn't bring herself not to.

"I think you should," said Amelia. "I think you'll regret it if you don't hear him out."

"I just want to figure out how to stop fighting like this," she said. "An argument is one thing, but... I can't keep making excuses for him when he blows up at me. I can't put myself through that all the time."

"Maybe now you know that... well... don't take this the wrong way. But you've been keeping secrets from him, and then springing them on him all the sudden. And you mean well. I know you do. But maybe it's the secrets and the surprise. Maybe if you cut that out..."

Caiti looked away. She didn't want to admit that Amelia was probably right. Caiti wasn't innocent in the situation any more than Marlowe was.

She thought about sending Evelyn an owl. She always had good advice. But in the end, she decided not to. Evelyn had her own problems to be dealing with right now. She didn't need to be worried about Caiti's too. Evidently, Marlowe hadn't told either of his friends what had happened either, or Caiti would definitely have heard about it from one of them by now.

She was glad of this. She had other priorities to keep her occupied. Homework for one, as N.E.W.T.s were approaching at top speed now, and more importantly, preparing her speech for the grant acceptance banquet.

It was becoming very real that in two weeks, she would be standing alone at the front of a large room with only a podium and her notes that professor Pym strongly recommended she try to use as little as possible.