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It was hard, he thought, trying to sort out all over again who your friends and enemies were.
He'd never had cause to question motives before, but Rafe had been friends with a lot of people. A lot who weren't in Gryffindor, who had differing opinions on blood status, and a handful whose pranks could tend on the cruel side.
Not murder, surely. But then, who here could such a thing be expected of?
At any rate, the Gryffindor felt like he had a target on his back this term, the first time he'd felt that way since finding out about the wizarding world at age eleven. He'd fought tooth and nail to get his parents to allow him to come back to Hogwarts; the last time he'd seen his mother, she'd been weeping. His dad hadn't come to the train station at all.
He'd never been much for class in the first place, and the professors already were beginning to sense his standoffishness this fall. Most, he supposed, suspected nothing--not that his sudden downward-spiraling moods were caused by deaths of students he couldn't have picked out of a crowd, not that he was darkly critical of former bedmates, ones who'd never cared who his parents were. He'd never been called a Mudblood. Even so, it didn't seem to matter.
It was still warm outside when he stepped, slightly out of breath, onto the balcony. Summer wasn't keen on letting go. Due in part to the weather, Rafe wasn't exactly expecting to be alone on the astronomy tower--but he wasn't expecting to be sharing it with Celia Wood, flunkee extraordinaire. Quidditch player extraordinaire, too, he knew from several years of experience--but you ask any sampling of students which they thought was more interesting, and it wasn't going to be the sport. Rafe hesitated for a moment, long enough to consider going back down the spiraling staircase, then decided one slender blonde classmate wasn't worth being deterred.
"Studying hard, Celia?" he asked her, then immediately felt like a jackass. It wasn't her fault, really, that she'd had to return; she'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another victim of the clusterfuck that last year at Hogwarts had been.
"Sorry," he followed up immediately, then leaned against the balcony beside her, hands dangling off the edge. Instead of the sky, he watched her. Silky blonde hair, features that looked a little lost even bathed in moonlight. They'd never been super close, really--she'd always seemed a little unapproachable, running around with Ted and some of last year's other graduates--but that didn't give him the right to cut her down. "I've got a lot of pent-up aggression this term, I guess. How're you doing? Don't see you around the common room much."