24 - Study Hall (Study Partners).
Alice held her tongue for a long time, although she kept sneaking glances out of her book and across the table at the Ravenclaw boy she was studying with. It wasn’t the first time they had shared a library table, helping each other where one or the other was weak and encouraging each other where they were both strong; it was a different sort of studying than Alice could do with the members of her own house who, while undeniably clever and for the most part academically inclined (more so than Ravenclaws, Alice had discovered, who often had less interest in their grades than they did in their questions, while Slytherins liked to score), had learned from an early age that some questions were not asked.
it was one of those questions that Alice was struggling not to ask now, but she couldn’t hold out forever. She’d always been a little too curious for her own good, her mother had cautioned her for years – but she couldn’t help herself, she needed to know. It was driving her mental, the not-knowing; she chewed her lip, swung her legs back and forth under her seat (at twelve she was still short enough that her feet didn’t reach the floor when she sat all the way back in the tall library chair, not unless she pointed her toes), fiddled with her quill until it was nearly bald, read and re-read the same page three times–
Then finally, she burst out with, “Are your parents really Muggles?”
Alice should have been horrified, should have clapped her hand over her mouth and swallowed her tongue for such a breach of conversational etiquette; for asking one of the questions that was never spoken aloud…but she didn’t. Instead she kept talking, the forbidden words pouring out of her: “Not Squibs or half-bloods but actually just plain Muggles? With no magic at all? No magical ties or ancestors or anything?” She stared at Ted, who was blinking up at her curiously, seemingly having trouble shaking off the fugue of Transfiguration study enough to follow her hissed and hurried words – or perhaps he was simply shocked by the outrage of being asked such rude things.
“Did you…” Alice looked around furtively, then leaned in a little closer, pushing herself in tighter against the table with the tips of her toes, “Did you steal your magic? Who did–” She swallowed. “Who did you steal it from?”
For a moment silence hung between them, huge and quivering and fragile. Then Ted burst out laughing, startling not just Alice but everyone for three tables around them. It was loud, hearty laughter without a trace of shame in it. It would have been infectious if Alice hadn’t been so perfectly poised between her own guilt at broaching a taboo subject and her hunger for answers to the questions she should never have asked.
It wasn’t until they were both banished from the library for the evening over the amount of noise they (he) were making that Ted sobered enough to swallow his laughter and begin to answer her.