Archive of Our Own

It's definitely a surprise to Max when he's made Head Boy his seventh year. He hadn't been a prefect, had thought most people took no notice of him other than the annoyingly persistent werewolf rumors (He wasn't a werewolf. He had, in fact, spent several full moons deliberately in the middle of the common room in hopes of discrediting the theory, to no avail).

Arriving at the train and finding that Furiosa had been appointed Head Girl- that, he understands. She'd been a fair prefect, not prone to the house-favoritism Slytherins are stereotyped as having (as if every house wasn't biased to its own members), and he though she would do well to at handling the role.

They haven't really interacted much, prior to this. They have NEWT-level Defense Against the Dark Arts together, or at least they had last year, but Max mostly keeps his socialization to his own house, prefers knowing it won't ruffle feathers. It doesn't really help that he's vastly intimidated by her, has been nursing a crush the size of a dragon on her since pretty much the first time he saw her hex someone for insulting one of the other girls, back when they were all snot-nosed first-years.

He thinks she's wizard-born- most Slytherins tend to be, and he vaguely remembers hearing about a vast family involved in various wizarding careers- but it's hard to tell, with the way her prosthetic arm seems to be a blend of magic and muggle engineering.

“And who's this?” Angharad, Gryffindor's seventh-year prefect, asks cheerfully when Max steps inside the train compartment his letter had told him to meet up in. Most of the other prefects are already there, a sea of faces he's more-or-less familiar with, and there's an uncomfortable moment where he looks for Goose only to remember that he'd already graduated the year before.

“Max,” he says, “'m Max.” The Head Boy badge sits at an uneasy angle on his cloak, and he only barely resists the urge to fiddle with it.

“Oh,” she replies, searching his face for something she recognizes, expression still politely welcoming. They've had Herbology and Transfiguration together for the past three years, but he makes an effort not to draw attention to himself, so her not remembering him doesn't sting. Much.

“Rockatansky,” Furiosa says, and he's a little surprised that she knows who he is, but his nervousness at being here overrides any sort of pleasure he might have felt at being recognized. “I didn't think we'd see you here.”

He shrugs his shoulder, makes a noncommittal sort of a grunt. “Got my letter,” he says, in case they wanted him to prove he'd actually been appointed. Max didn't think there had ever been a case of someone impersonating a prefect, let alone a Head student, but. He knew he wasn't what most people would think of for a first choice.

But Furiosa just nods easily, like his being appointed didn't really surprise her much after all.

“You haven't heard the spiel before, but it's pretty basic,” she says to him, and then turns so she's addressing the rest of the assembled prefects as well, gesturing lazily with her flesh hand. “We're all representing the best of our houses, school pride, code of honor, blah blah. Don't abuse your privileges, yes we know who takes what points from which houses, no there's no secret clubhouse to sneak into after-hours.

“Now, everyone pair up, go down the train and make sure students aren't jinxing each other or refusing to change into uniform or whatever. Report in on the hour. And no taking away points for Merlin's sake, the year hasn't even started yet.”

“Um,” one of the Ravenclaw prefects says, hand raised, a boy Max doesn't recognize that has the sort of scrawny, stretched-out look fifth-years tend towards. “What if someone is getting hexed?”

Furiosa levels an unimpressed look at him, one that has the boy shrinking back. “Then you stop them.”

No one dares ask more questions, and as the train lurches into motion the prefects disperse, leaving just him and Furiosa in the compartment. He's not sure if they're supposed to patrol as well, or have some other task- his appointment letter had been pretty vague about his responsibilities.

“Where's your timetable?” she asks after a moment, “We'll have to figure out a time for meetings.”

Max fumbles through his pockets until he finds it, hands over the parchment and doesn't at all wonder if they're still sharing Defense, if they're sharing any more courses maybe.

“Huh, you're taking Divination?” she says as she reads it over, and he bristles preemptively because he knows it's a dumb class for a seventh-year, but he'd had a slot to fill and he was pretty sure he could get away with sleeping through it and pretend he was interpreting his dreams, so. “We have that and Defense Against the Dark Arts together; we should study together.”

And it deflates him, replaces the defensiveness with a wash of surprise. She didn't seem the type to take Divination, especially so late, and she definitely didn't need help studying for Defense- her scores were just as high as his. Not that Max had happened to see them after wondering what his own class ranking was and looking through the records, or anything.

“Mm,” he agrees, and once she pulls out her own timetable they set up a weekly meeting, pending the Quidditch schedule. Neither of them would be trying out for their houses teams- they couldn't, not with the pressure of it being their final year of NEWT classes and being appointed Head students, but it went unsaid that matches were not something to be missed.

When they reach the station Max has to be reminded to help the first-years find their way to the boats, but from there he's free to take one of the carriages like usual. He wonders, suddenly, if Furiosa can see the Thestrals. She doesn't really react to them, but when he pats the one that'll pull their carriage on the nose her eyes seem to focus on its black hide for a moment before flicking away.

He had been surprised, his first year, to learn that most people couldn't see them, and those that could avoided them. They were just animals to him, no stranger than any other he's encountered since entering the wizarding parts of the world.

Just because they were only visible to people who'd seen death- it wasn't as if they could help it.

It's strange to not have Goose and Jessie to hang around with. Max knows most of his housemates, of course, but he'd been essentially adopted by Jim his first year and hadn't befriended anyone from his own class as closely in consequence. Roop and Charlie were in his year but they were best mates themselves, a close-knit sort of friendship that he doesn't really fancy trying to break his way into.

And the girls were, well, girls- he wouldn't dare impose himself on them. It had been one thing to spend time with Jessie, but she'd graduated too, and the girls in his year didn't seem overly enthusiastic about the few times he'd tried to make conversation, so he left them alone.

Hufflepuffs were thought of as being one big happy community, but of course that wasn't entirely the case. They made an effort to get along with one another, sure, but just being in the same house wasn't enough to guarantee an actual friendship.

And this year... Some people see the Head Boy badge on Max's cloak and immediately start avoiding him, for fear he'd catch them doing something against the rules, others come up to pester him with questions as if he'd memorized the entire student handbook and could recite it for them.

(He's not even sure there is an official set of regulations, since the only copy in the library has pages torn out and scribbled over and pasted back in. He asked Headmistress Giddy and she only said something vague about finding one's better self, the enchanted tattoos across her skin writhing into arcane symbols he couldn't even pretend to decipher. And then she'd winked, and he remembered that, in the grand tradition of elderly witches and wizards everywhere, she was a bit batty, so overall he just uses common sense.)

Angharad evidently feels bad enough about not remembering him on the train to start going out of her way to say hello in the hallways and during classes, and with her comes a horde of friends and acquaintances and admirers, so after a few weeks Max finds himself loosely inducted into her circle. They're all rather sharp and witty and he feels slow-footed, out of place, but there's always someone to talk to between classes now and no one calls him a werewolf to his face, so it's certainly tolerable.

The prefects only meet as a unit once a month, after the first week of classes has passed and it can be reasonably assumed that the first-years aren't going to get themselves immediately killed, but he and Furiosa are supposed to meet weekly. They alternate working on homework with talking about whatever problems might have cropped up: whether so-and-so brewing wit-sharpening potions in an empty classroom deserves to be reported to the profs, if they should put more effort into figuring out whoever it is that's sneaking around the kitchen past curfew, what to do for the Halloween Feast's decorations.

It's nice, getting to actually spend time with her rather than just sort of quietly admiring from afar, and it's not long before they're what he would call rather good friends, not inseparable but still fairly close, comfortable around each other.

Divination turns out to be as much of a fluff course as Max thought- as he predicted, hah- it would be. He and Furiosa, as the only two seventh-years present, claim a table set away from the underclassmen on the first day and politely but firmly decline to move any closer. Professor Trelawney begins the first class by vaguely predicting that they'll both die by the year's end, so she mostly shakes her head sadly and leaves them alone to bemoan their fates.

They start out the term by working on natal star-charts, the sort of stuff they've worked out for Astronomy ages ago, and then interpret them in interesting ways.

“Sirius was descending,” Max informs Furiosa as he looks over the slapdash birth-chart she's drawn up, mock solemn, “Means dogs flee before you.”

She snorts in reply, taps one of her flesh fingers against his own chart, literally traced from an old assignment he'd done in his second year. “The sun was 37-degrees west at your birth, which means you're destined for a life of bad haircuts.”

“Hey,” he protests, can't resist putting a hand into his hair as if to smooth it down or cover it from sight. It was a little rough, sure, but it wasn't as if he could see the back of his own head. But from the light in her eyes he knows she's just teasing, and getting to know her as a friend is doing absolutely nothing to diminish the crush he has. He's so, so fucked.

He's kind of a bit shit at Transfiguration, is the thing. It actually reminds him a little of the science classes he'd had before Hogwarts, all equivalents and precision and bizarre symbols. Max only scraped up an 'Exceeds Expectations' by the bare skin of his teeth during his OWLs, knowing he'd need to get into and then pass the NEWT levels if he wanted a real shot at becoming an Auror.

Somehow he's found himself getting tutored by a sixth-year Ravenclaw, recommended to him by Angharad once she saw how he struggled at the assignments. It's a bit embarrassing, having to be helped by someone younger than him like he's remedial, but he's self-aware enough to know that he's fairly hopeless without some assistance.

“You're shit at this,” Dag says, looking at what was supposed to be a conjured butterfly with a sort of fascinated horror. There's wings on it that are sort of the right color, yeah, but it's got entirely too many legs in absolutely the wrong places, and it skitters and jumps and- oh fuck, it's flying.

“Confacimus!” Max curses uselessly, still a habit though the only Latin he learns nowadays is related to spellwork, draws his wand to try and blast it out of the air. It's swaying far too unpredictably, jerky and fast, and he can't risk hitting any of the books or else Mme. Pince will have his head.

Of fucking course, right as it drunkenly lurches towards the open doorway Furiosa walks through, distracted as she talks about something with Angharad a step behind.

The- well, it's definitely some sort of bug, he thinks- it crashes straight into her head, buzzing angrily as it flails against her, and Max is still too far away to swat it off but it's alright because her metal hand darts out almost faster than his eyes can track, crushes down around it with a wet squelch.

“The hell,” she says with feeling, looking down at the sticky pulp smeared all over her hand.

“Sorry,” Max says, a little out of breath from the sprint over, “sorry, that was- sorry.” There's some angry red lines across her face where the bug had landed, scratched her up with its (far, far too many) legs, and he cringes a little because he hadn't directly done that, but it had still happened because of him.

He doesn't dare reverse the spell while it's still all over her hand, instead just casts scourgify and prays that he doesn't fuck that up somehow as well.

“What was that?” Angharad asks, looking around the air of the library as if there might be more of them in need of fighting off.

“A butterfly,” Dag says with no small measure of amusement.

“A butterfly,” Furiosa repeats flatly, looking from her now-clean hand to Max's face.

He's about to start attempting to explain himself but he realizes that some of the red scratches on her skin look kind of odd. There's a few that are starting to swell, turn an angry purplish color, and oh fuck, he's managed to attack her with some sort of poisonous hell-spawned insect.

“Um,” Max says, “I think, it's kind of. Um.” He gestures to the worst of the scratches, her face furrowing in confusion before the movement evidently draws up the sting, because her flesh hand flies up a moment later, expression turning to one of startled pain.

“Oh, that's not good,” Angharad says when she sees. “Max, help her get to the hospital wing, Pomfrey should definitely take a look at that.”

“I don't need help,” Furiosa replies sourly.

“Your eye's already swelling shut,” Angharad says reasonably, because it is, and turning a sort of blotchy red-purple that hurts just to look at.

“'M sorry,” Max says uselessly on the way to the hospital wing, “I don't- I'm shit at conjuring. Was supposed to be a butterfly. Not- that.”

Furiosa directs a very lopsided glare his way, arms crossed over her chest. One of the cuts had gone across part of her lips, makes her words slur when she speaks, “I will probably be able to laugh about this later- because what the hell Max, no one is that bad by seventh year- but right now it hurts and I couldn't care less.”

He nods, accepts that she'll be angry with him for a while, and takes it upon himself to explain to the harried nurse what had happened.

It takes a full day for the swelling to go down, but by the time he slinks back in with another apology and a packet of chocolate frogs for her, Furiosa seems to have mostly forgiven him.

The way she seems to delight in biting the heads off the squirming frogs while staring steadily at him is mostly disturbing, he decides. Disturbing and not at all something he finds strangely compelling. Dammit.

Someone starts a food fight in the Great Hall at dinner. Max has absolutely no idea who started it or why but within minutes there's pudding flying every-which-way, and the younger students are shrieking, and someone sets off a dungbomb-

It's a mess, is what it is. Perversely Max finds himself enjoying it, a bit, as he throws up protego shields to stop custard from raining on a screaming set of first-years, sends a jug of pumpkin juice flying back to the girl who'd tossed it in the first place. It was messy and thanks to whoever set off that bomb not a little disgusting, but it's also the sort of thing he lets himself imagine he might encounter once he's an Auror.

Not that he'll be called in to deal with food fights, of course, but it's the pulse of excitement as he has to think on his feet, the rush of spells snapping off his wand, acting on instinct instead of careful classroom exercises.

He's not very surprised when he somehow ends up back-to-back with Furiosa as they work to stupefy or otherwise apprehend the worst of the offenders, the heated tones of her own spellwork in sync with his own.

Eventually, the last of the food leaves the air and the room is cleared of students. The house-elves will deal with the physical mess, Max knows, but he can't help but grimace as he looks at the spatters stuck to the walls. Maybe they could suggest the ringleaders take up a sponge and scrub for detention, not that it'll happen. Muggle cleaning methods were below wizards, after all.

“There's treacle in your hair,” Furiosa points out, as if there isn't something unidentifiabley red smeared across the front of her own blouse. He can feel the syrup dripping wetly down into his collar, if he focuses.

Something pelts Max in the back, right between the shoulder blades, and he whirls, wand raised, because they should have gotten the last of the students taken care of. But it's just Angharad, a second bread roll in hand, grimacing as she looks them over.

“You smell foul,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Both of you.”

“Dungbomb,” Furiosa says with audible distaste.

Max is grateful that if nothing else, being so close to the detonation of it has blocked his nose from registering smells at all for the moment.

“Go wash,” she commands imperiously, her own outfit perfectly neat and tidy, “The profs have this all well in hand, anyway.”

“Yes'm,” he replies with a twist of sarcasm, as if there was anything he'd rather be doing but heading for the showers.

Furiosa tugs at his sleeve once they leave the Great Hall's entrance, stops him from turning in the direction of the Hufflepuff dormitory. “Prefects' bathroom is this way,” she says, and he squints at her, not understanding. “You want to deal with all the filthy students in the dorm showers?”

Ah, he hadn't thought of that. He'd done what he could to keep students from getting plastered, but some had seemed to revel in the filth of it. If the plumbing wasn't enchanted, he'd have serious reservations about the strain the mess would be putting on the pipes.

The prefect's bathroom isn't a place he's visited more than once, just to learn the location. The public toilets were perfectly adequate for between classes, and he'd never before encountered a reason why the Hufflepuff showers weren't fine.

Furiosa speaks the password without hesitation, “Mentha piperita,” and pulls open the door.

Max had forgotten how large it was, and how instead of shower stalls or even spigots set into the walls, there was a huge bath, easily expansive enough to swim in.

“Um,” he says, because there are two of them and only one bath, and he's pretty sure he won't be able to pretend she was just one of the blokes rinsing off after a Quiddich match, not if she plans on stripping down right in front of him.

“You took the worst of it, you first,” she says, already pulling off her cloak so she could get at the straps of her prosthesis, work it off her shoulder. He hopes there's some sort of spell on it, to keep the delicate moving parts protected, because otherwise cleaning it must be a nightmare.

“Go on, you do smell rather awful,” she says with a shooing gesture, before turning her back and sitting to face the doorway. In a dry tone she adds, “I promise not to peek.”

Max keeps his eyes trained on her back while he quickly strips down to his pants, sets the taps flowing. It's not that he doesn't trust her, it's just-

He's never been seen naked by a girl other than his mum (and the next-door-neighbor once, when they'd played doctor as kids), and he really doesn't want the first time Furiosa, in particular, sees him to be one where he has treacle gummed up in his hair and magicked dung clinging to his pores. The pants are a poor compromise, will do absolutely nothing as soon as they get wet anyway, but he takes some tiny measure of comfort in having that scrap of cloth to cover himself with.

It's quick work to get the worst of the mess out of his skin, though he has to struggle through six different taps before finding one that doesn't smell aggressively like candied flowers even to his still-stunned nose, and there's fluffy towels stacked off to the side that he wraps around his waist as soon as he's out.

The air in the bathroom is warm and steamy, fragrant with the remains of the perfumed water that's draining away, and Furiosa's face is flushed red when he tells her that it's her turn.

It's very hard not to listen to the sound of her clothes hitting the marble floor, the splash she makes entering the water. Max sits in his damp pants on the cold floor and wills his dick not to react, focuses on sending cleaning spells across his filthy clothes. They'll still need to be cleaned properly by the house-elves (or perhaps just burnt, not that he can afford the waste) but at least he'll be able to wear them through the halls without feeling like he needs to shower again.

“I've always thought it was creepy,” Furiosa says, startling him so much that he almost turns to her direction, holding himself back just in time. “The mermaids, I mean. In a bathroom? Bad enough there's Myrtle rattling around the girl's loo, at least no one showers there.”

Max hums wordlessly in reply, flicks his eyes up to the stained glass window that's within his safe sight-line. The mermaid in it swirls around her glass waves, seeming to pay no attention to either of them while Furiosa splashes about and he focuses very, very har- very deliberately on nothing but cleaning spells.

He understands what she means, because he's never quite sure how much these things think. Wizard photographs move but that's no different than a movie, something static and recorded. Portraits talk, and interact, and can even learn things. It makes him a bit uneasy, used as he is to unmoving muggle art, not sure where the line between object and person is.

“All set,” Furiosa says, and he reflexively turns, sees her wrapped in a towel, her long pale legs bared as they haven't been since she demanded to be allowed to wear trousers. Max's face burns red and he quickly turns back away. Her legs hadn't looked like that in their second year, of that he's sure.

She chuckles softly, probably amused at having gotten a reaction, and Max is mostly just grateful that he'd already pulled his jumper into his lap while working at a stubborn stain.

There's the noise of cloth rustling, so incredibly close that he can practically feel the air being displaced as she dresses, and then she steps around his front, clothed again.

“You gonna get dressed?” she asks, stooping to pick up her discarded prosthesis, tucks it into the folds of the cloak slung over her arm.

“Ah,” Max hedges, because of course he doesn't fancy the thought of walking through the halls in a towel, but he doesn't quite think he's fit to stand, at the moment. Not until he can manage to convince his body that there's nothing to be excited about, certainly not anymore.

She shrugs, casual. “Suit yourself,” Furiosa says, strides towards the door. “See you at the pitch tomorrow?” They'd found that they were more likely to make time for studying if they could grab a couple of brooms and blow off steam flying around, first. So they would fly while the sun was up, and retreat to the stands to work on homework once it gets dark enough that Coach Valkyrie starts calling out mid-air-collision statistics and threatening to summon the brooms back to the shed out from under them.

He hums in affirmation, avoiding her eyes. As soon as the door shuts behind her he darts to one of the toilet stalls, doesn't let himself think about anything (anyone) in particular at all while he takes care of his problem.

The days get colder, until leaving the dormitories without being bundled up becomes almost impossible. Well, impossible for most students. The Hufflepuff dorms are right next to the kitchens, always blazing warm with the heat of their ovens, so Max tends to forget until it's midway through the morning and he's shivering under his thin all-weather cloak, wishing he hadn't left his scarf hanging off the bedpost.

It's a Wednesday, which means he starts the day with Defense Against the Dark Arts, means he gets to partner with Furiosa to practice casting and dodging and doing the sorts of magic he is good at, action and reaction.

Well, that he would be good at if he wasn't devoting such a large portion of his concentration towards not shivering. When Furiosa zaps him for the third time with a spell he should have blocked easily, she shoves her wand into her pocket after giving the counter-curse and sighs. “I don't know how you manage to live like this. Do you even know warming spells?”

Max grunts, because of course he knows warming spells. He just doesn't like using them, doesn't like the way they drain his energy or wrap like layers of sand around his limbs.

She's wearing a proper winter cloak, of course, looks downright toasty even though her prosthesis means she never wears a jumper, as if there isn't snow trailing in from the open windows. “Ace is going to yell at you if you stay distracted like this, and you know you're his favorite.”

He's not, because she's Professor Ace's favorite by a mile, but he'll still get yelled at because they're neck and neck for top marks and he's tough on all his best students.

“Here,” she says, unwinding the silver and green scarf from around her neck, loops it over his own. “You're such a fool, letting yourself freeze.”

A single scarf shouldn't do much against the chill but it warms him from the inside out, as surely as if he'd drunk off a warming draught. He tries to say thanks, though it comes out more as a vague mumble, and her mouth ticks up into something that might, on another person, be called a fond smile.

“Come on,” Prof Ace bellows, “I want to see hexes flying! Jobassa, stop coddling your partner- if he can't dodge, he deserves to get hit!”

Max doesn't realize until he's back in the dorms at the end of the day that he hasn't unwrapped Furiosa's scarf from around his neck, is still enjoying the warm weight of it. It's a bit strange to look down and see silver-and-green instead of the Hufflepuff colors he's used to, but if anyone else notices the change they haven't said anything.

He should return it. Obviously, he should remember to take his own scarf tomorrow morning and return hers during breakfast.

Somehow, the silver of it catches his eyes and he remembers to grab it on his way to the Great Hall, but the familiar yellow-and-black colors of his own scarf lay forgotten against the quilted bedspread. For three days.

And then it's Sunday and Max forces himself to do something about it, because she hasn't said a word but it's not fair to keep depriving her of a scarf when they're rapidly approaching December. He finds Furiosa scribbling away in the library, working on the same essay he'd finished up the night before, and he makes a vague noise to get her attention.

She looks up and he holds out the scarf in his clenched hand, and this was dumb, he shouldn't have, should have just returned her own scarf like a normal person, no wonder people think he's a sodding werewolf.

“What's this?” she asks, taking the scarf from his hand. The yellow-and-black looks crisp against the metal of her prosthesis, he thinks a little dumbly.

“Just, um, thanks. For letting me borrow y'r scarf,” he mumbles, avoiding her gaze.

“...But this is yours, though,” she says, and he can only shrug, because it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“The color,” he says in an attempt to explain, “It's different. I, ah, remember it better.”

There's a beat of silence and he darts a glance at her face, finds her looking not discomfited as he feared but almost... pleased, maybe. There's something light in her expression, something that seems to want to tug a smile onto her face. He ducks his head again, mumbles out an excuse to leave, and flees.

They've moved onto tea leaves in Divination, thankfully leaving the realm of dreams behind. Max had thought that part of the syllabus would be easy, but frankly most of his dreams lately have been less than symbolic, and definitely not anything he's willing to share aloud, much less in a classroom.

So, tea. They can't add so much as a lump of sugar, more's the pity. Professor Trelawney scowls something fierce when one of the younger students asks if they have to drink it, goes on a diatribe about absorbing the energy of the leaves into your own self and personal destiny and- Max mostly tunes it out, which is pretty par for the course with this class.

He hasn't bothered to read the chapter on symbols, is willing to justify his lack of preparedness by saying it's a choice to ensure his “mind's eye” remains “unbiased”, should anyone ask. Furiosa had snorted when he told her, but seemed willing enough to pass over the drained cup for him to read while she cracks open the text.

The problem is, tea leaves swirled around the bottom of a mug look like a lot of nothing. “Er,” Max says, squinting at the blobs.

“What do you see,” Furiosa says in a piss-poor imitation of Prof Trelawney's voice, taps her fingers against the spread pages of her textbook.

“A flower,” Max decides, because that seemed pretty safe.

“What kind?”

“Um.” The first flower he can remember the name of is a rose, but he's pretty sure that roses were universally romantic, which- “A lily?”

Furiosa hums, flips through the pages. “Lilies- love, happy marriage, a virtuous wife. Wow, that's kind of sexist. Unless wait, is it going to be my wife?”

Max clears his throat, doesn't commit to an answer. He remembers a night on the pitch when she'd rolled her eyes and said that of course everyone had a crush on Coach Valkyrie at some point, had gone on to share examples of the stupid stunts she herself had pulled to try and get her attention.

He gives the teacup a quarter turn, squints down at the dark shapes. “A necklace,” he says, since there's a sort of ring shape, and he has enough sense to know that a ring would probably have a very different meaning than a necklace.

“Necklaces... Admirers, prosperity, love. Oh, was it broken? Because then it's all basically the opposite.”

Max makes an indistinct noise in reply. Trelawney would probably prefer a gloomy answer, he thinks.

There's a large blob when he gives the cup another turn, and he winces to remember his disastrous transfiguration attempt but says it anyway. “A butterfly?”

The pages of the textbook rustle. “Butterflies are flirtation, pleasure, admirers,” Furiosa says. “I would have guessed 'change' or some shit like that, but okay.”

This is terrible. Max can feel his face heating up, hopes desperately that she doesn't think he's picking the symbols on purpose. He wasn't lying when he said he hadn't looked through the chapter, but he's wishing that he had, so he could pick something that didn't have to do with fucking romance.

“A unicorn,” he says, because why the hell not. They were all about innocence and chasteness, right?

“Unicorns- ooh, a scandal, or a secret marriage.”

Max gives up. He sets the cup back down on the saucer, leans over into her space to see the book, because maybe she's been fucking with him and giving the wrong answers.

“Sooo...” Furiosa says after a moment, once he's flopped back into his own overstuffed chair in defeat at seeing descriptions that were even more flowery than what she had read off. “Something on your mind?”

It's Christmas break, and Max has never once gone home for hols. He likes how quiet the castle gets, the way the snow piles up in huge drifts despite the groundskeeper's best efforts, likes that he doesn't have to face his parents' silences as they all ignore the closed door in the hallway, the fourth stocking that gets unboxed but never hung up anymore.

It's perhaps not fair of him, running away like that, but the two years before his letter arrived were enough to teach him that staying was worse.

“Hey Max,” Capable says as she comes to sit near enough on the wooden bench.

He makes a noise of acknowledgement, looks up from the scrap of parchment he'd been doodling across. He'd known of her as a fellow seventh-year (and because one of his housemates has the most embarrassing crush on her, which is the reason they can never win matches against Gryffindor anymore) but he hadn't gotten to know her at all until this year, when he'd learned that she was Angharad's best friend and thus, central to the social circle he'd fallen into. She's muggle-born, like him, stays over break because there's never enough money for train tickets to get home from King's Crossing.

“We're going to Hogsmeade tomorrow, if you wanted to come?”

Max shrugs; the thing about break is there's no schedule, no need to make plans, and he's somewhat enjoying the sloth of it.

“I know you're Head Boy and all,” she says, lowering her voice, “but promise not to tell? There's going to be a get-together, at the Shrieking Shack. Furiosa's got her Apparition license, she's bringing firewhiskey and muggle liquor.”

This instantly takes up his attention because the Shack was supposed to be haunted, and wizards were a bit weird about alcohol, and he thinks about getting drunk in some windy hut surrounded mostly by people he wouldn't really call friends but can't seem to find another name for, and it shouldn't be appealing but it sort of is. Not at all a factor is the thought of seeing Furiosa after a few days without, much less in such a casual setting.

“Toast's rigged up a record-player, so we'll have music,” Capable continues. “Do you think you could...”

“Ask Nux?” he says when she trails off, and she nods shyly, face flushing red. Because the really hilarious thing about Nux's crush on her was that the kid couldn't see that she had just as big a crush back. “Slit?” he asks with a bit of a grimace, because the only reason Nux even stayed for hols was for his friend, and he was... not the easiest, to get along with.

Capable sighs, tucks one of her long red braids back over her shoulder. “Yeah, I guess. It's not supposed to be too big, though, so no one else, okay?”

He hums in agreement, and she flashes him a smile before sliding off the bench and disappearing out the Hall.

From up at the staff table he swears he sees Headmistress Giddy wink at him, though she couldn't possibly have heard any part of the conversation, much less approved if she somehow had. But, batty, so he doesn't worry too much about it.

Max hadn't noticed, but Nux is wearing a Slytherin scarf. Has been for a while, now that he thinks about it. His friend Slit is complaining about the cold as they trek from the center of Hogsmeade, as if it hadn't been his own decision to shave himself bald, neck piled with yellow-and-black. They must have swapped, he supposes, and he should be pleased by the show of inter-house unity but mostly he's not sure if he likes that he and Furiosa aren't the only ones who've traded, anymore.

The Shrieking Shack is every bit as rickety and dissolute as he thought it might be, wobbles rather alarmingly as the wind rips through it. But Max can feel the quiet hum of reinforcement charms if he concentrates, layered up by countless generations of students who've decided to visit it for one reason or another.

“You came!” Capable says as she throws open what had looked like a boarded-up door, revealing the dusty and ruined interior of the Shack.

“You came,” Toast echoes from besides her with much less enthusiasm, looking at Slit as if he was a particularly slimy flobberworm.

Slit sneers back at her, opens his mouth to say something in reply but is silenced by Nux elbowing him hard in the side. “Slit, you promised!” he hisses, and Slit grumbles but subsides.

It's not much warmer than the outside, but there's softly glowing orbs hovering in the air that seem to put off a bit of heat, and there's a few blankets thrown over the back of a decrepit couch that look fairly cozy. Probably too much of a danger to set up even a magicked fire, he thinks.

“Fury and Splendid will be here soon,” Capable says, and it takes Max a second because of course he knows Angharad's nickname, but he doesn't think he's ever heard anyone call Furiosa “Fury” before.

As if summoned there's the loud pop of Apparition, a pair of figures stumbling slightly as they misjudge the landing. Neither look splinched, which is a bit of a relief since he has no idea how much practice they have. He hadn't been old enough to sign up for the Apparition course last year, but he'd heard far more than enough about what could happen if things went wrong.

“I knew you could manage a passenger!” Angharad says victoriously, unslings her arm from around Furiosa's shoulders to ruffle a hand through her shorn hair. “First shot's mine.”

“Where's Dag and Cheedo?” Toast asks, turning from her glaring contest with Slit to greet her friends.

“Indisposed,” Furiosa replies succinctly, and it apparently means exactly what it sounds like she's implying because Toast rolls her eyes, and Angharad stifles what might have been a giggle.

“They're gonna miss it,” Capable says with a sigh, “And it's the last year we'll all be together!”

Furiosa shrugs, apparently unconcerned, and pulls out a few tiny bottles from the pocket of her robe. “KT was brewing mead again; if anyone wants butterbeer instead you'll have to run to Broomsticks before they close.”

“Cheedo can suck it up,” Toast says, “Whenever it is she gets here.”

“There's firewhiskey, right?” Slit demands, “That's why I'm here.”

Furiosa turns to regard him flatly, utterly unimpressed, and his bravado falls away almost immediately. Then her eyes land on Max, still hovering awkwardly near the doorway, and her expression softens.

“Hey,” she greets, and he twitches out a wave in reply.

Angharad unshrinks the bottles, and Toast sets up the record-player, and it's a party, apparently. The music is loud and scratchy and indistinct where it blares out the speaker, but it blocks out the shrieking whistle of the wind, so it's not all bad. Max has a glass with a finger of firewhiskey pressed into his hand and he downs it on reflex, suppresses a cough at the way it burns his throat.

“Good, huh?” Furiosa says, fluidly knocking back a shot of her own. It's certainly something, he thinks as it continues burning warmly inside his belly, living up to its name. “I don't miss having to filch it from the cupboards, Auntie Keep always had such weird flavors.”

Max makes a vague sort of sound in acknowledgment, the noise mostly lost to the music, and finds another measure has already been poured for him while he wasn't looking.

“Never had mead,” he says once he's drunk the second helping of firewhiskey, because it's true, and because he's not sure drinking just firewhiskey is a particularly good idea.

“It's not bad,” Furiosa replies, “There's honey in it.” She pours a darkish-gold glass for him from an unlabeled bottle, and it's not nearly as light and sweet as butterbeer but it goes down easily enough, so he hums his approval.

For the most part, it's the girls hanging out in a way that speaks to years of familiarity with one another, with Capable occasionally reaching out to pull Nux into the conversation, or Slit interjecting rude comments. Max stays near the edges and refills his glass periodically, half hoping and half fearful that the alcohol will loosen his tongue, unsure where he fits in when Furiosa isn't directing the conversation.

Not long after they flip over the first record, Dag and Cheedo show up at the door, broom in hand, giggling as they halfheartedly brush snow off one another.

“You made it!” Capable cheers, “We've plenty of time, then.”

“There's no butterbeer,” Toast tells Cheedo when the girl starts to settle into the amorphous ring they're sitting in, somewhat apologetic.

“Oh,” the girl says, and Max suddenly realizes that she's only a fifth-year, younger than the rest. Firewhiskey would probably be a bad thing to give her, he thinks.

“Mead's good,” he finds himself saying, lurching up out of his seat for the spread of bottles on the rickety table. “Has, hn, honey.”

Someone laughs quietly, and he blinks in bewilderment because he hadn't thought he'd said anything funny. The room looks more off-kilter than usual, a bit fuzzy around the edges, like it's hard to focus on anything.

“You're a lightweight,” Furiosa says delightedly, and Max hunches back down, regrets moving at all since it'd only drawn attention to himself. Her face is a little flushed, eyes bright where they reflect the glowing lights scattered around the room, and she looks utterly at ease where she's sprawled out in an old armchair. “No, no, it's fine!” she tries to reassure him, still attempting to stifle a laugh.

It's hard to feel actually offended when she's smiling like that, but he manages an exaggerated sort of scowl. Might be more of a pout, really- it's a bit difficult to tell since he can't quite seem to feel his face at the moment.

“Games!” Angharad says cheerfully, drawing his attention away, “Who's playing?”

“What're the stakes?” Slit asks, always overly-competitive.

“Depends on what we play,” Toast replies exasperatedly, wrinkles her face in disgust when he sticks his tongue out at her.

“Truth or dare?” Dag suggests.

“Spin the bottle!” Capable calls out, then collapses into giggling.

“Never have I ever?” Nux says shyly, face bright red.

“Lie detector,” Angharad says decisively. “Everyone know how to play?”

Max has never heard of the game before, but it's not as if he has much experience with parties like this, where everyone is more focused on their friends than just getting as drunk as possible and finding someone to snog. Thankfully Nux also shakes his head, prompting Capable to explain.

“Someone says two things about themselves that are true, and one thing that's a lie. Everyone has to guess which is the lie. If we guess right, the person drinks. If they trick us, we drink!”

“Hey Max, does being a werewolf mean you can tell when someone's lying?” Slit asks, “I think that's cheating.”

“'M not a werewolf,” Max says, for what little good it'll do him, and never mind that wasn't even how werewolves worked.

“Great, Max- you go first!” Angharad says, waving her hand grandly in his direction.

He bites back an annoyed grunt, wracks his foggy brain for something to share about himself. “I'm not a werewolf,” he says to start, because it's the truth and it deserves to be restated. “My mum's name is Eleanor,” which is also true, and not anything he thinks could be used against him. “And, um, my favorite color is... black.”

“Lie!” Dag says, a pronouncement that is readily chorused by the rest.

“Black isn't even a color,” Toast says disdainfully.

Max shrugs, picks up his glass of mead to take a drink. It's stronger stuff than he'd realized, but it doesn't leave him feeling prickly-hot the way the firewhiskey does, and the aftertaste of honey makes it pleasant to keep sipping.

“Now pick someone to go next,” Angharad tells him, and he points a finger out at random.

“Me?” Cheedo says, evidently surprised to be called on so early in the game, and he shrugs again because it's not like he was aiming for anyone in particular.

“Okay, well. Um. My toad escaped down a drain last year? I'm allergic to pumpkin juice. And I made friends with the giant squid.”

“Bullshit,” Slit says, “There's no such thing as the lake squid.”

“I remember that toad,” Dag says wistfully.

“Just because your face scares the squid away, Slit,” Furiosa says, “doesn't mean the rest of us can't look out the windows and see it.”

The Slytherin dorms are under the lake, Max remembers suddenly, and wonders what it's like to look out the windows and see not the rolling grass he's used to but deep dark water.

“I'm saying the squid's a lie,” Capable says, “It exists, sure, but...”

“Same,” Nux chimes in.

Cheedo smirks a little, which is what makes Max squint his eyes in suspicion at her. Hadn't she been one of the girls who got covered in pumpkin juice during that food fight? He's pretty sure he would have remembered someone having an allergic reaction, even amid the chaos.

“Pumpkin's a lie,” he says, and her face twitches futilely as she fights to contain a grin before giving in.

“The squid likes having his mantle pet,” she says cheerfully, and Slit groans dramatically, as if he's been grievously betrayed. “Drink up!”

Max ends up drinking more often than not during most of the rounds. He doesn't really know these people well, for all that he's been casual friends with them most of the term, and his mind gets fuzzier and fuzzier the more he drinks in a vicious cycle.

“I fell off a broom and broke my leg when I was three,” Furiosa says when it's her turn, still far more composed than he is despite the languid way she's sunk down to sprawl across the floor with the rest of them. “I wanted to grow up to be a dragon until I was eight. And, I 'borrowed' a muggle car last summer and drove to the coast.”

“You drive?” Max asks, practically in a puddle, not really paying much attention to the point of the game at all anymore. Somehow he's slumped over so he's leaning against the legs of the same chair she is, shoulders practically touching, and the effort of turning his head to look at her has him sliding a few centimeters closer.

She smiles warmly at him, “It's not like flying, but it's not bad.”

He hums, because nothing could beat the freedom of having naught but a broom between you and the sky, but gunning a roaring engine down an empty street was a close second. He hadn't though she would learn to drive; most wizards wouldn't, not if they planned on staying out of the muggle sections of the world.

He thinks about her behind a wheel, all that rolling metal and horsepower at her command- a shiver runs through him, just picturing it.

“Which is it?” one of the others demands, and Furiosa turns to look back at them, blinking as if she'd forgotten the game was still going on.

“Who the hell stops wanting to be a dragon?” she says, flashes a toothy grin. Max snorts in amusement, muffled because his face has somehow ended up in the soft folds of her scarf (his scarf? Their scarf?), because of course that would be her answer.

Furiosa's shoulder shifts underneath him, arm wrapping up around until her hand is in his hair, fingers rubbing in small circles. Max sighs contentedly at the touch, lets his eyes slip shut.

He's shaken awake some time later, blinks blearily in the dim light. “Come on fool,” Furiosa says at a hush. “Can't have the Head Boy getting in trouble for staying off grounds at night, even if it's just hols.”

Max mumbles something that might be a request for a few more minutes sleep and tightens the hold of his arms around her waist, not really taking in details with his head still fuzzed over. He can feel her laugh more than he can hear it, but then she's moving, lifting herself up off the dusty ground and tilting him further upright as she goes.

“Come on, up,” she says with a gentle tug, “You're heavy for such a lightweight.” He reluctantly gets his legs under him, finds that the room is even more lopsided than he remembers. Might be the drinking, might be the way the wind continues to push at the rickety walls.

“Here, Nux, you can take him,” Furiosa says, and Max has enough sense of dignity left to refuse to be passed between them like a child. He shakes his head partly in refusal, partly to attempt to clear it, and detaches himself from her warm hold to stand on his own.

“'M fine,” he grumbles petulantly. He's maybe wobbling a bit, but the ground doesn't seem as though it's swaying too much, so he feels he's steady enough to walk on his own.

“Merry Christmas, Max,” Furiosa says, and the look on her face is soft and fond enough that he has to lean forward, presses a quick kiss to the side of her cheek that maybe turns into a bit of a nuzzle in his lack of coordination.

“Happy New Year,” he replies, pulls back to stumble for the door, lets the freezing night air outside attempt to wear off some of the drunkenness before he returns to the castle.

He ends up not remembering much of the party, when he tries to look back. The memories he does have are blurry and warm and pleasant however, laughter and scratchy music and a vague sense-memory of someone petting his hair, so he doesn't mind overly much.

Sometime during the night, though, Nux had apparently made a move on Capable- or the other way around, Max isn't really sure. However it happened, they were suddenly inseparable, and he learns a distressing amount of information about their snogging technique whenever he tries to spend time in the common room.

There's also some weird new tension between Toast and Slit, different from their usual rivalry, that he is avoiding all contemplation of like the plague. Thankfully, whatever that mess is, it melts back away once classes start up again, never mentioned again on pain of knee-reversal hex.

There's a snowstorm right in time for the weekend, the sort that leaves snow piled up high, just the right consistency for molding into snowballs and forts and sculptures. Max decides it's his duty to ensure that the Hufflepuff underclassmen know the proper way to pack a snowball- the muggle way, without wands- and trails first- and second-year students like ducklings as he leads an expedition out into the grounds.

He's wanted to do this for a while, if he's being honest with himself, but before being appointed Head Boy he might have only ended up scaring the kids by suggesting it. Now, though, he knows everyone in his house much better, has to when they constantly come to him with problems and questions. It wasn't all that hard to find the words to suggest the “lesson” when he saw the way the underclassmen were already eager to venture into the snow, noses pressed to the glass of the windows and chattering excitedly about winters back home.

Nux makes a decent, if slightly overzealous, assistant until he gets distracted by Capable as she and some other Gryffindors build their own fort not too far away, leaves to offer her a kiss and cops a loose handful of snow straight down the back of his robes in reply.

“This means war!” Nux declares, laughing as he retreats back behind the wall of their fort to pick up a snowball. He lobs it in her general direction, missing deliberately by several meters, a show of mercy he needn't have bothered with.

A red-toned snowball smacks directly into his face in answer, and within seconds the once-peaceful scene is a warzone, magicked snowballs flying from all directions, red and green and blue and the occasional solitary white as more and more students join in.

Max quickly gives up on insisting on hand-packing, lets them use the sort of charms that aren't taught in any textbook but passed from kid-to-kid on the playground, focuses his efforts on keeping the fort intact and listening for malicious ice spells.

“Ew, the 'Puffs are peeing on theirs!” someone shrieks, because of course an inter-house snowball battle needed to be color-coordinated, and the main Hufflepuff color was, after all, yellow. That no one was accusing the Gryffindors of bleeding all over their snow to color it was the sort of annoying double-standard he's grown resigned to.

“Pissy 'Puffs!” someone else shouts, and the juvenile chant overtakes the more generalized insults for a moment.

Max is willing to ignore the taunt until it dies down- their snowballs were colored with a magic charm, same as the rest of the school's- but he blinks and suddenly the snow piled up inside of his fort is black, as if someone spilled ink all over the area.

He looks around for who might have changed the charm, gets hit square in the chest with a green snowball for his trouble. He traces the trajectory and it's Furiosa, of course, who winks before waving her wand, pulling up a second snowball to get tossed his way.

Max hasn't been using his wand, prefers digging his hands into the snow and actually throwing the snowballs, but it doesn't make him any less ready to retaliate. He lobs a newly-black snowball at her, catches the edge of her leg, barely ducks in time to dodge the answering missile she snaps off.

She laughs, and he bares his teeth in a grin of his own, and then it's on. Snow flies fast between them, charmed or thrown or, once, kicked as he leaves the fort to the underclassmen to defend in order to chase Furiosa across the snowy field.

Somehow, though he's not quite sure of the specifics of the route, they end up ranging far away from the others, dodging trees at the very edge of the Forest as they pelt each other with snow.

“Your aim is terrible!” she taunts him as he hits the tree her head had just been in front of, and Max huffs because his aim isn't terrible, it's just that she's fast. But he's grinning even as he pretends to be affronted because he's having fun, only wishes there was some way to incorporate brooms so it might become perfect, this playful chase and mock-battle.

There's not as much good snow the further they tromp through the trees, weighted down with dampness and pine needles and the sure knowledge that they're skirting an out-of-bounds area. It becomes more of a game of stalking the other than flinging as much snow as possible, slipping in and out of shadows to try and surprise each other.

They're deep enough into the trees that Max can't even hear the sound of the battle on the grounds, anymore, when he pauses to roll a few more snowballs.

He can't hear Furiosa either, he realizes; there's no crunch of her boots on the snow, no rustling cloak as she sprints back out of reach. He straightens from his crouch, suddenly on edge, alert, and feels deeply aware of the fact that he's further from the safety of the schoolyard than he should be.

There are reasons why the Forbidden Forest is forbidden, is the thing. Centaurs and acromantulas and creatures of all sorts, trees old enough to have learned spite, shadows that hungrily draw down upon you and leave nothing behind.

“Furiosa?” he calls out, because the only thing worse than being too deep in the Forest was being there alone, and he can read the trail of his footprints easily enough to find the way back out but he's not sure the same can be said for her, with all the weaving about she'd been doing.

There's no reply, and Max weighs his options. Try to track her down, though she probably won't actually need to be found; or let the still air of the Forest know that he's heading back to the castle, hope Furiosa hears and decides to follow so he doesn't have to alert one of the professors that she's gone missing.

He turns the snowball in his hands over and over, lets the icy bite of it against his ungloved skin keep him grounded.

She's probably just out of earshot, he thinks, and it's not that she's not an accomplished witch- his first thought was looking for snow-trails like a muggle, she probably would think to use the Four-Point spell to navigate the way back, or send up a flare of sparks if she was really in trouble.

Still, Max is uneasy being in the darkening forest by himself, potentially leaving her alone as well, mind swirling with all the grim tales he's heard over the years.

“Furiosa?” he calls again, lets the snowball drop back to the forest floor in case she thinks he's luring her in for an ambush.

There's only the soft sound of snow falling off a branch, trees in the distance popping eerily in the cold air.

And then he's jolted off his feet as something large slams into him, fast enough that he can't do anything but fall.

He hits the snowy ground hard, all the air knocked out of his lungs, dazed eyes catching on the far-away grayness of the sky where it peeks between the trees.

“Got you!” Furiosa says smugly, doesn't make any real effort to hold him down, flushed and glowing in her triumph at besting him so easily.

Max reacts without thinking, twists around until they're flipped and she's on her back with him crouched over her, his weight heavily pinning down her legs, panting as the air returns to his lungs and his heart races because- because-

“Hey, Max,” she says, still sounding pleased with herself for getting the jump on him.

He'd been worried and she had just been pulling a prank, had still been playing the game, and Max doesn't think he gets to be upset about that but he is anyway. She'd been missing, if only in his imagination, and now she's here and perfectly safe (of course she was safe, he was foolish to have thought for even a moment she wouldn't be) and he's really not sure what he's doing.

Because now he's just staring down at her, the way her breath steams in misty curls through the cold air, the yellow-and-black of his scarf still tucked around her neck like it has been for months now. And she never lets anyone this close, doesn't play like this, carefree and easy, and he doesn't know what any of it actually means.

“Max?”

She squirms a little, and he realizes that he's still pressing down on her, can feel the warmth of her body leeching through their layers in stark contrast to the cold air around them. He really should move away because he's being weird and creepy again but her eyes are bright and her red mouth is open a little, like she's out of breath too, and Max ducks his head to kiss her because he doesn't think he can quite manage not to.

Furiosa makes a soft noise of surprise, and her mouth is still open but he doesn't- he has some control, he doesn't just take, and when she doesn't respond right away he pulls back hastily.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, scrambles to get off of her, because he's probably just fucking ruined one of the best friendships he's ever had because of a dumb crush. Max can't seem to get his feet under him, ends up pressed against the bark of a tree with his legs folded in front of him, gaze averted from where she's still sprawled out dark against the snow. “Sorry,” he repeats uselessly.

There's a beat of silence, and then the muted noise of her moving, a shadow falling across the snow as she walks over to stand in front of him.

“Hey,” she says, voice a little shaky, upset maybe. “Max? What was that?”

“Sorry,” he says again, forcefully, because he doesn't really want her to rub it in his face, wants her to walk away so he can flee back to his dorm and work out a way to salvage the situation.

“Are you sorry 'cause you didn't want to,” Furiosa says, and she sounds strangely hesitant, unsure in a way he doesn't think he's ever heard from her. “Because you didn't mean to kiss me? Or because of something else?”

Max scrubs one of his hands over his head, frustrated with how tangled his thoughts are, a situation not helped by the fact that he can feel her looming over him, still close enough to reach out and touch.

“I shouldn't have,” he replies, “You're my friend.”

“So you didn't mean to kiss me,” she says, and there's something weird in her voice that makes him finally look up at her, take in the flash of hurt that flickers across her face before her expression closes off.

“No,” he says, because he hadn't meant to, but- “yes,” because he'd wanted to, and then Max can't form words at all, just grunts in frustration.

“It's okay,” she says, and sits down on her heels so they're eye-level, lets her flesh hand play with the edges of her scarf. His scarf, still, Hufflepuff colors against the green lining of her cloak. “I know that I'm not- I know that people don't like me, like that. You got caught up in a moment, is all.”

Now he's confused for a different reason, because Furiosa isn't yelling at him for taking advantage of their friendship, she is, for reasons completely beyond him, putting herself down?

Max looks at the way she's hunched in on herself, and the happy glow from their snowball fight is gone so she's only red from the cold, skin chapped, expression fierce in its forced indifference.

“I like you,” he blurts out, because she looks small in a bizarre way, like she's trying to take up less space, like she's apologizing. “You- you're amazing.”

“Max, I'm not going to stop being your friend,” she says, “It's okay. You don't have to-”

“'M lucky to be your friend,” Max says, cutting her off, the words spilling out of him. “Didn't wanna screw that up. 'S all fucked anyway, now. So I, um, I like you. That way. I wanted to kiss you, and I wanted you to want to kiss me.”

Furiosa is quiet for a minute, and Max is starting to wonder if he should just crawl away after all, but then he thinks how that would mean she's alone in the Forbidden Forest with that terrible smallness still clinging to her shoulders, and so he doesn't.

“So you were apologizing because...” she says, and her eyes have lifted off the forest floor, are back to gazing at him keenly, more like her usual self already.

He twitches his shoulder in a shrug. “I wanted you to want me back,” he says, and tries to squash the hope that's starting to flicker in his chest because she doesn't sound mad, doesn't sound as if she's disgusted by the idea of him wanting to kiss her.

Furiosa nods, breathes out a decisive breath. “You surprised me,” she says. “I wasn't... rejecting you.”

And that hangs in the air between them for a long moment, until Max clears his throat.

“So, if you, and I...” he says, because articulating himself with words has never come easy but he thinks maybe he needs to try.

“Can I kiss you?” Furiosa asks, direct.

Max nods, eager and relieved, and she smiles a little bit before leaning forward, and this time when their lips meet it's a proper kiss on both sides.

(They might end up getting slightly carried away, despite the cold, and only manage to escape a lecture from the groundskeeper about the importance of staying within the school's bounds because the poor fellow can't quite look either of them in the eye. Furiosa persists in radiating smug satisfaction about the whole thing for days afterwards.)