everyone_takes | [Morning after the rave

Her head hurt and her jaw hurt and, generally, Kate felt like shit as she dragged herself out of the IPD office and headed down the hall toward her room. Danny had done the whole lecture thing, making sure she understood that there would be consequences if she tried to burn anything else down again, but luckily Kate was pretty sure she was done with the whole firebug thing. It obviously wasn't going to end well, no matter what she was trying to burn down.

The night before was coming back to her, crashing into perfect clarity as she remembered all the things she'd done. For the most part, they were good things. She'd had fun and talked to people she loved, and there was Harry, of course. All good things. But she could also remember standing in the rec room, matches in her hand, trying to convince Jeff that burning down the bookshelf would be a good idea.

And now, far too early to be awake, she was doing a very special walk of shame.

All she wanted was to sleep in her own bed and she crept into the room and past the curtain that separated her side from Marshall's when they wanted privacy. Dragging her feet, her hair a tangled mess from the salt water and the night in a holding cell, she stopped beside the bed, looking down at Harry.

"You totally need to move over," she muttered, yanking her t-shirt over her head and trying to nudge him over under the blanket. "I need to lie down for about a thousand years."

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"Like what?" she asked, surprised that she was still even able to speak. Earlier, in the jail cell, she'd been sure that she'd wander back to her room and crash, probably sleep for about ten hours, but she felt better now. Even so, she had no desire to get up and go anywhere, but lying here made it easy to forget the last few hours, the uncomfortable bed in the holding cell, the cop watching her every move.

He hesitated for a second to swallow down his laugh. Of course she had thought he meant something magical. Harry had been the same way once, but now it was cute to see it in her. "Like warning signs. You know, the kind on a stake you stick into the ground? They usually say things like 'Keep Out' and 'Danger.'"

With a snort of laughter, Kate shook her head, looking amused. "So not like, some crazy spell that makes you glow when you get too close?" A warning sign seemed so simple, like something someone might do in Kansas and she was pretty sure no one had any type of magic in Kansas.

"I'd want to do everything with magic if I could," she said. "Everything."

"Nope. Just regular, old signs," he said. "If we had magic, maybe we would think something up, but..."

Harry was not about to let the fact that grindylows technically had more magic to them than he himself did get him down. He ran his hand lightly up and down Kate's arm. "It never gets old," he said. "It really never does."

Goosebumps broke out on her skin and a shiver snuck up her spine at the feel of Harry's hand on her arm and Kate turned to him again, smiling faintly. "You could do almost anything, couldn't you?" she asked, thinking about the things she'd heard about the books and movies.

"You could fly," she said, trying to imagine what that would be like. She'd always liked flying, being in an airplane, watching the ground disappear into perfect patterns below.

He bit his lip softly as he grinned at the question. Truth was, there were a lot of things Harry couldn't do, because skill or magical law prevented it. But he didn't want to disappoint Kate with explaining all that, when essentially what she said was true.

"I could," he said. He sounded wistful, maybe even a little pained at the admission. It felt like a long time since he had felt the wind in his face. Maybe he should take Buckbeak out sometime soon. "If I had a broom or a flying creature.. or an enchanted car or something, yeah."

"The only way I could fly is in an airplane," Kate said, tipping her chin against her shoulder, thinking about that. She hadn't been on many planes over the course of her life, her family hadn't exactly been rich enough to take that many vacations that didn't involve packing up the car and going to their grandparents' place.

"I think I'd like that," she said. "I think it'd be my favourite part, if I could do magic."

"It's my favorite," Harry said, his grin growing a little wider. When he was with Kate, Harry never questioned his decision to stay with Kate, especially for comments like that. He didn't think he could be with someone who didn't love flying.

"I'll take you out on Buckbeak one day," he promised. "If he approves of you."

"As long as he doesn't peck my eyeballs out," she answered, fingers walking lazily up Harry's chest and then down again, tracing a slow pattern on his skin. "I need those for seeing things and batting my eyelashes at you and doing the whole big eyes look to get out of trouble."

But the thought of that, of being up in the air on a creature like that... it was definitely cool. Sometimes she missed her family more than she could even put into words, but other times she had to admit that life here was giving her more than she would have had in Overland Park.

Harry chuckled softly. "I would miss your eyes," he said. "We'll have to make sure he likes you. Maybe you can get him a nice, fat, dead rat," Harry suggested, taking care to enunciate each word. "There's no way he'd peck you to death then."

"Oh, boy," Kate said dryly, her fingers pausing in their movements so she could look at Harry, her eyebrows raised. "A nice fat dead rat. That sounds... really disgusting." But if that was what she needed to do to get on the animal, then she would. "As long as someone else kills it for me, then we're good."

But she was not going to kill anything herself.

"..Maybe the hunting crew will do that for us," Harry said awkwardly. The last thing he wanted to do as well was hunt down a rat. He never stopped to think about where Hagrid had gotten things to feed some of his creatures.

"Or maybe we'll just have you bow."

"I can do that," Kate said, pushing her hair off her face again, working her fingers through tangles that felt like they were never going to come out. This was what happened when you got high, went swimming and then spent the night in jail.

"I had lots of practice from my recitals," she said.

"A trained bower. I'm sure he'll like you now." There was some amusement in his voice, but not a mocking kind. He wasn't sure practice in bowing helped, but he couldn't imagine Buckbeak not liking Kate.

"We'll do it then," he decided, rubbing at a blurry eye with the heel of his hand. "Tomorrow. Or... sometime after a lot of sleep."

"Lots of sleep," Kate agreed, curling closer to Harry, glad that Marshall was wherever the hell he was for the moment, that they were alone, here, and that they didn't have to go anywhere else until they wanted to. That all that stuff, the bowing and being responsible, that could all be put off until later, until hours of sleep were had. "Next time we'll find a bigger bed," she murmured.

[Morning after the rave - Harry]

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