Right Where You Left Me Solo Finished

For a girl who had mentally professing and fighting against being in love since the previous summer, Aly sure was excited to meet her secret Valentine's pen-pal.

Though she'd been quite excited for it at first, the average age of the letter-writing party had quickly dissipated her hope for actually meeting someone - platonic, romantic, what say you - through the activity, or at least someone who was around a sixth-year, like she was. Still, she'd written a letter to her pulled name - Kavi, which wasn't clearly a male or a female moniker, not that she minded particularly - in the admittedly thin hope that whatever magic had caused her to draw that particular heart with those particular words scribbled upon it also knew that she really wasn't in the mood to babysit. The letter was very clear: meet her after curfew at the lovers' fountain, bathed in the light of the full moon, so they could have a proper meeting instead of one surrounded by eleven-year-olds. Aly had promptly left the scene, feeling that there was no one there her age to whom she could speak while she waited for the mysterious Kavi to show, and passed the time attending dinner and mucking about in her Beauxbatons cabin. (Luckily, a few of the later hours had been whiled away talking to Haven, who was a cabinmate and easily one of her best friends, who had spent the evening having her own meet-cute with a handsome and yet somehow unnamed Ilvermorny boy. Aly could only hope that Haven's good luck was to rub off on her.)

Haven had found a letter outside their cabin door, clearly delivered during Aly's accidental dozing-off, and though good chunks of it had been eaten by the rangy, gawky creature Haven called a pet and Aly nearly always confused with her Head of House, the remaining message had still been clear. As the sixth-year Ravenclaw slipped quietly from the doors of her cabin and made her way through the architectural mastery that was Beauxbatons to the courtyard with the lovers' fountain, Flamels entangled forever and ever in a stony embrace, she rifled through the nibbled scraps of paper clutched tightly in her hands, reading and rereading the words emblazoned on them.

looking forward to finding out more

a sixth year at Tenūsa, I enjoy potions, poetry

I have five siblings, three of

love to meet you at the fountain tonight, I

this evening. I hope you will grace me with your

truly looking forward to meeting

And, of course, the best of all.

Yours,
Kavi Kattimani

The blush across her cheeks from reading through these scraps the first time had hardly faded by the time she read them again, and even grew stronger as she scanned them a third time, then a fourth. Perhaps it was just the intrigue of having a secret pen pal, someone to sneak out to after curfew had banned all of the younger years safely into their cabins, or maybe it was the way her pen pal penned their words, with some kind of quiet strength and formal parlance. She didn't know much about Tenūsa, having never actually met anyone from the Oceanian school before, but had managed to do some quick reading in textbooks scrounged up from her cabinmates' trunks and at least knew now that it was on an island and enjoyed a very Divination-centric focus. Armed with at least one common topic of conversation, for Aly herself quite enjoyed Divination as well, she made her way towards the fountain through the courtyard and perched delicately on its edge, giving the brilliant silver moon above a hopeful glance.

She read the scraps again. Looked at the moon again.

Read. Look. Read. Look. Has the moon moved since I first got here? Wasn't it over there originally?

Aly blinked up at it before realising just how much time had passed since she first arrived. She'd been so engrossed in the thrill of the wait, her heart pounding all the little details as to who Kavi could be and what they could look like and the friendship - or more - they could have, that she hadn't bothered to count the minutes, with each second feeling like the one just before they would show up to sweep Aly off her feet or at least become a valuable international platonic connection. Now, though, it began to dawn on her: perhaps the scraps hadn't painted the entire picture. After all, Marcus - the Pygmy Puff, not the Head of Ravenclaw House - hadn't eaten the whole thing; he could very easily have chomped down on the most important words, like can't or won't or not, and left the less delicious, and kinder, phrases completely untouched.

Now, each second that ticked by, each grain of sand through the hourglass, felt like an eternity of shame. She'd been duped. And not by her pen pal - by a Pygmy Puff. Okay, no, perhaps by the pen pal, too. Clearly, they hadn't wanted to meet her - curfew had come and gone, and they still weren't here. Sure, they'd likely tried to let her down kindly, introduced themselves and even told her a little about them, but a letdown was still a letdown no matter how cushioned. And Aly felt - perhaps not betrayed, but definitely like she wasn't worth meeting.

Still, she stayed there for a while longer, just to make sure. And when no one showed, she slowly made her way back to her cabin, where she collapsed into her bunk and stared up at a moonless ceiling, for once so grateful that she couldn't see the stars.