Cassana Brennham
Potioneers In-Training
Posts : 199
 |  Subject: Cynosure (Part One; One-Shot) Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:34 pm | |
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Cynosure
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Hectic.
That was the only way Cassana Brennham could describe her life in the past months. School had been a total pain in the butt, but she dealt with it. She kept school her top priority. However outside of school, her social life had been relatively dead. This was because she’d started something of her own little project - err- projects was more accurate. It started one night after Brooke, her best friend, had left on a journey that Cassie hoped would help her best friend. She had been lounging around their empty apartment, sort of sulking that her best friend was gone when she decided that was no way to spend the night. She was only 20! Granted she was married and in college, but those facts could be cased aside in light of the fact that at 20 years old she was spending way too much time inside.
Now, she didn’t trust herself to not party the night away like she had back in her younger witchling years at Tituba’s.
So instead, she did what she loved best after dancing and networking; reading.
She propped open the very book that led her to meet another one of her best friend’s, Parker, and was startled by how terribly easy it had been for the author to brew her own Potion. She felt her chest puff at the idea that she too could do that. But the emptiness of the apartment was brutal. So instead, she opted to go stay in her husband’s apartment. Technically it was also her apartment, but she spent the bare minimum amount of time there. Still, Devin had try-outs for Quidditch teams and therefore wouldn’t be there so often.
Besides a little dinner here and there wouldn’t kill her would it?
With that in mind she packed her bags and apparated into her Shadowbane apartment.
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The first night in their apartment she made dinner for Devin. It was simple, just spaghetti with meatballs and a note.
Hope try-outs were good or whatever. I’ll be staying here for a while; don’t mind me. Knock if you need something. -Cassana
She didn’t hear him arrive as she’d been blasting her music and working through her Potioneer textbooks and novels. She planned on tackling the encyclopedias of Potions and Potioneer tomorrow night and instead used the Notes charm she’d found in a GlamWitch magazine to take parchment after parchment of notes for her project. She had a to-do list and looked like this:
1 Figure out what kind of Potion to brew
2 Plan out the ingredients necessary for said Potion
3 Test Potion out
4 Test Potion
Number one was the hardest step as it meant she needed to first figure out where a Potion would be most necessary. After six hours spent reading and writing, she stretched, yawned, and chose to sleep.
When she woke up, Devin was gone but there was a note taped to her door.
Ana. Thank you for the pasta.
It didn’t mean a lot, but Cassie still smiled and put it in an empty box that was supposed to be used for Ella’s trinkets.
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The next weeks were relatively quiet, Devin was usually out, and Cassie was usually working. She’d found that her best chance at Potioneering would have to do with a foreign potion. She had four projects within the end of the first month of Brooke being gone. The first one was a Potion to effectively recover lost memories - like a pensieve, but easier to access. This one was the hardest to find the ingredients for as it usually meant having to use ingredients that more often than not reacted negatively to each other. The second one was a revival for an archaic potion she’d found in an encyclopedia on Amortenia; this was the potion used to effectively seduce Queen Guinevere by Sir Lancelot. It was powerful, and lasted longer than other love potions. She had this brewed and stored away for safety; it was under review by the Ministry about testing it on others. The third one was trickiest to brew. It had a consecutive twenty-two steps and ingredients that she’d had to travel to the very outskirts of the Philippines for. It had the ability to give the user the chance to take on the properties of a Metamorphagus. Like the second project it was under review of the Ministry about testing it on a person.
The fourth one was her personal favorite even if it was still a work in progress. It worked as a locator and tracking spell. With a bit of DNA, the user could find another person within minutes. It was to be dedicated to Ella, and yet she still couldn’t find the proper ingredients for it.
By the second month of living with Devin and the third week of working on the fourth potion, she was irritated and hitting a creative block.
“Oh,” she breathed out surprised to see Devin there standing at the island in their kitchen with a slice of bread in one hand. His eyes met hers, and he gave a nod.
“Good evening.” He said formally. Her lips twisted into a pout.
“We’ve been married for like way too long now, there’s absolutely no need to be so formal.” She dismissed the greeting easily as she stared to walk into the kitchen. She was dressed in yoga pants and loose light pink sweater that had billions of brilliant splotches from ink on it, still it was comfortable and easy to work in.
He said nothing, but she caught the flash in his eyes. She guessed that said flash was annoyance, even if he said nothing. Interesting, she thought, the Cyberman has emotions. He caught her eye and glanced at the other half of the sandwich. She considered it and thought better.
“I think I’m in the mood for noodles, do you think you’d want some if I made some? I mean I’m gonna make it regardless, but I’m trying to do the good thing here.” She added.
“Maybe.” He replied with a small shrug as he moved to the table. She nodded and started boiling water before heading over the fridge.
“Want anything to drink? We’ve got fruit punch, mango juice, coconut water, water with lemon, water without lemon, or I could make some tea and coffee?”
“Water with lemon is fine,” he replied, she glanced over at him as she poured his beverage into a glass. For the first time since they’d met, she was starting to look at Devin with a lot less contempt. It was more analytical than anything else. He had a strong jawline, pretty eyes, fine set of lips, very good body, she flushed and looked back down before grabbing the fruit punch and setting the water next to his plate.
“How were try-outs today?” She asked, sitting at the opposite end of the table from him. This was small talk, she realized with a small frown; she abhorred small talk, but she earnestly didn’t know where else to start with her husband.
“Fine.” He answered curtly. Her lips pursed into an even larger frown as she sipped more of her fruit punch. He didn’t say anything, but another emotion flashed through those gor- no -green eyes. Was that curiosity? Or bemusement?
“That’s ah good.” She said unsurely, “I don’t know how you have the gall to get on a broom, and I’m super glad that getting married in the Wizarding World now is a hundred times safer than getting married in the Wizarding World like a century ago. Did you know back then if a witch and wizard got married they had to bind their magical cores together with this spell? Basically they could feel each others emotions so the husband would know if the wife was cheating. Okay, actually, that only existed in the Austrian Wizarding World but still it was a pretty big thing. Isn’t that terrifying? If you died on a broom then I’d die on a broom or if you got hit with a Blugger I’d feel that pain, and that would be a terrible, terrible marriage.”
He was silent a moment as he took a sip of his water, his eyes watching her. His plate was empty, and once he placed his water down he answered. “Bludger- not blugger.”
“Same thing.” She waved her hand away, when he stood to put his dished away she waved that hand again and stood up too. “I’ll clean it up since I have to make my noodles anyway. Just go get some sleep, I’m guessing you need it with all that broom riding in the freezing weather.”
He blinked at her answer and when she looked up at him there was an interesting kind of emotion that slid into his eyes that she didn’t quite understand, but still he gave her a small smile and a nod.
“Thank you.”
For not the first time, as Cassie ate her noodles at watched Netflix, the only thing she could think about was the fact that Devin had one of the nicest smiles she’d ever seen.
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In the following months, Cassie would stop her research to eat dinner with Devin. They started a kind of rhythm, that she couldn’t deny liking a lot. She’d be home, and he’d get home. After thirty minutes of clean-up on his part, she’d emerge from her room and either make dinner or offer a list of places to eat with Devin. When she proposed take-out at the emotion in his eyes - one she was guessing was avid disgust - she immediately changed it to saying she was going to cook instead. He waved it away and said he’d cook instead.
She ignored the fluttering in her stomach.
Cassie pulled her hair into a high ponytail and looked over herself in the mirror. Lately she’d been deciding against her comfortable leggings and sweaters and opted back into her usual skirts and dresses with tights. She argued it was spring setting in, but she only ever left the apartment with Devin. Therefore most of the time it was only Devin that saw her. She ignored the implications of what it meant to want to look nice for the quiet wizard and instead pulled the sweater she was wearing over her head and switched into a black and white shirtdress and a dark grey sweater-jacket that matched her slightly over the knee high socks.
She pulled her hair out of her ponytail at the last second as she heard the bathroom door open. Tucking her wand into her pocket she opened the door to the living room.
“So, super Quidditch star, what’re you in the mood for tonight?” She asked as she perched herself at a barstool she’d bought for their island. When she caught sight of what he was wearing she blinked in surprise. “You’re dressed awfully nice- did someone die or…?”
“It’s our eight month anniversary,” he said as if it were the most casual thing. Her heart suddenly did that weird thing it’d been doing for a while. It started going really fast and skipping important parts of the beat. Her eyes roved over his figure again. Gods, did he look nice in a suit, she thought as her cheeks heated.
“Oh yeah, so a dinner. Fancy probably. O-okay I can - yeah I’m gonna - you know - I’ll - change. Change. That’s what I’m doing hahaha.” She forced a laugh from her throat as she rushed back in to the guest bedroom she’d practically made her home as her heart smashed against her ribcage.
Why did her husband get to be so handsome? It just wasn’t fair, she thought annoyedly as she pulled out a more formal, form-fitting pink dress and did her hair in thick curls. Her make matched the color of her dress and her heels were a champagne color. She put in little pink bow earrings and a rose-gold necklace with triangles on them. She pulled a white sweater over her shoulders, and looked over herself in the mirror.
“Ready.” She called out as she re-entered the living room space. “And in twenty minutes too, I really am the most capable of witches.” As she said this she managed to ram into table outside the guest door and flail around for fifteen seconds before she steadied herself again on a wall. As her eyes grabbed onto Devin, he was smirking and there was amusement in his eyes.
“You look very lovely tonight.” He commented as he offered her his arm to apparate them away.
“T-Thanks.” She answered looking down at the floor, willing the fluttering in her stomach to disappear and the racing of her hear to go with it.
Dinner was good - she learned with a lot of prying that Devin was out of the try-outs phase for the most part and would be quitting the local part-time league he’d been playing at. The International Quidditch team wanted him as a third-string Seeker, but she was certain he’d work his way up in no time, a point she declared loudly and received glares from patrons of the fancy-schmancy restaurant. She ignored them in favor of studying the pretty way Devin’s face changed whenever he smiled.
She loved that smile, she realized as the night was drawing to an end.
“I had a lot of fun tonight, I mean I didn’t know lamb could taste so good,” she said with a yawn as they entered the apartment. She’d already undone her shoes and he had the buttons of his blazer undone as he shrugged it off. He took a seat on the couch and reached for the remote as she paused in her trek to her room. He looked at the seat beside him expectedly. Often times whenever it was storming too hard or she was truly ready to fly out the window because of her frustration with the fourth Potion, they settled into the couch to watch something on Netflix. She shook her head, but grinned widely. “Thanks, but I’m pretty beat.”
He nodded in acceptance, and she couldn’t help what she did next. Steadying herself on the couch she leaned down a pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek.
“Thank you for tonight, it was a wonderful anniversary.” She murmured softly and quickly before standing up quickly and hurrying to her room. She closed the door and panted heavily against it. For the first time in the nine month she’d known him, she heard his voice raise above it’s usual lowered volume.
“Good night, Ana.”
“Good night, Devin.” She answered immediately as she quickly changed into pajamas. As she lied in bed staring at the ceiling with her heart still racing and her senses still ringing with the proximity of being in Devin’s company, she grabbed at her phone and texted Brooke.
Come home soon. I think I’m in love with my husband.
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cynosure: (n.) a person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.
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