Closed You Can Hear It in the Silence

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity didn't often thank teachers for anything, not even quietly in her own mind, but she had to say she appreciated Professor Alcott-Ward's decision to make Cornelius do his fifth year over again. It was nice to have him in her year and in her classes, even if they only really hung out sometimes and spent the times they did hang out making fun of other people. Cornelius was kind of awful, but so was Vanity. She preferred kind-of-awful people to the nice ones any day. They weren't so sanctimonious and fake. It was how she found herself hanging out at the park with him during the break. It was so boring at home, and Vanity was happy to escape the house. What was the point of having an older brother who graduated if he didn't even move out? A job at the ministry hadn't improved Emery's mood any. Neither did living with their parents, she guessed. She could kind of sympathize on that point.

The two had found a spot near the pond in the park where they could just hang out in the grass, despite it being a bit too cold for it. Vanity had her sketchbook with her and was doodling in it, drawing cartoony caricatures of their professors. "Does this look like Castillo?" She asked Cornelius, holding it up to him. She adjusted her jacket a little, fighting a shiver. She should probably zip it up, but she was wearing a cute top and didn't want to hide it. She wondered if Cornelius had even noticed it. She wondered why she cared.

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Somehow at the end of the year, Cornelius was almost okay with having been held back. Almost. Sure, his future was ruined and his family were barely speaking to him, but... why couldn't he have been a year younger? Maybe he wouldn't have been a complete f*ckup and ruined his life if he had been in Vanity's year from the start. He hadn't ever really expected to make friends in school - Cornelius was more than used to what people seemed to all think of him, and he'd always seen schoolmates as nothing more than a temporary frustration to be waited out, but now... Maybe having a friend was the motivation he had always lacked.

Though if Cornelius was honest with himself, he had longed for Vanity to be more than a friend for a long time. He didn't know why someone as beautiful and popular as her would bother with him as a friend to begin with, but every so often... it almost felt like she was seeing him just the way he saw her. His heart skipped a beat whenever he remembered the time they had taken Felix Felicis together, and he had really thought... just maybe...

And now here they were, tucked away in a quiet, secluded corner of the park, just the two of them. What else could that mean? Unless he was being a huge creep, reading into it far too much, and projecting all sorts of things onto a girl who just felt safe enough around him, her trustworthy good friend? Of course he was - a girl like Vanity could never like him, and here he was, thinking all sorts of creepy things about her when she trusted him so much, what a-

Cornelius' spiral of self-loathing was interrupted by Vanity's voice, and he looked over with a blink, doing his best to focus on the drawing and not ogle her. "Oh, hell yeah." He grinned, blown away as usual by the quality of her art. It was sublime, and only made him feel even more inferior with his miserable doodlings. "You should draw him being eaten by a venomous tentacula."

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity grinned when Cornelius said the picture looked like their head of house and nodded enthusiastically at the suggestion he had. She did note with some disappointment that he barely looked at her. Maybe she really had imagined they might have had a moment last year. Sometimes she wondered if Corn even liked girls, though she also sometimes wondered if he did like her. It was confusing, but not something she could just ask. "Good idea." She said instead, doodling the plant vaguely around the tiny professor Castillo. "He's not the worst head of house, at least. Imagine having someone like Carter. I bet he makes the Hufflepuffs hold hands and sing songs at their house meetings." She said with a smirk. Her opinion of Professor Castillo had gone up significantly when he had just given them a bunch of paint-filled balloons and let them loose. Though she still felt like she should have gotten credit for the idea

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius snorted at the suggestion, idly ripping at the grass between them and piling it up with one hand. "Bunch of tree-hugging idiots." He rolled his eyes, glancing down at the drawing again. Still sublime. "Suppose we should be thankful for Castillo, then." Given the option, it wasn't the head of his house Cornelius would feed to a carnivorous plant, but he was determined not to dwell on that. Not when he was here, with Vanity, because she wanted to spend time with him. "Dumb that we don't have real art classes. You'd be top of the class for sure." He said, almost without thinking, then flushed as he realised the compliment had fallen out of him unbidden.

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity snorted when Cornelius called the Huffepuffs a bunch of tree-hugging idiots. "My sister hugs trees and she's in Ravenclaw." She commented. "So I'm guessing that house is weird too." She felt a little bad, making fun of Briony, but she actually had seen her hug a tree once. She looked up and raised her eyebrows slightly when he complimented her drawing again. She smiled a bit. "Well, thanks. I'm glad we don't, I don't want more classes." She told him. "And I don't really wanna be top of any class, so embarrassing." She said, rolling her eyes a bit.

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

A bolt of tension seized Cornelius as Vanity mentioned her sister, locking up at once. Sh*t - he hadn't even thought to remember which houses her siblings were in. Thankfully he had somehow managed not to completely step in it, and he felt his nerves unknit one by one. "Well, better than the other two." He agreed, hoping his voice didn't sound too strangled. He let out another snort of laughter at her next statement, though the concept felt a little alien. His whole life he had grown up knowing that being top of the class was the only correct option. And he'd never been able to manage that feat, a fact he had ground himself into the dirt for for the last seventeen years. It never even really occurred to him that anyone might consider being top of the class not a good thing. "Yeah." He mumbled, piling up a few ripped shreds of grass with a scoff. "So lame."

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity pondered what Cornelius said for a moment, scratching her chin. "I don't know, I think Gryffindors can be a more interesting house." She told him. "Both my siblings are Ravenclaws and it made me think that house is just for nerds and weirdos honestly. At least the Gryffindors can have some fun, you know?" She mused. "Even if they lack subtlety*." She added with a nod. Vanity glanced at Cornelius sideways. "I get it if you need to work hard for some sort of career you really want, but I swear most of these kids are just trying to impress their teachers or something, which is just embarrassing. Like Professor Haden from Charms is going to forget my name the second I step out of this school. It's meaningless." She said. "And I don't want some boring ministry job anyway."

*something miss paint balloons here definitely has obviously

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius couldn't hide the drop of his face at the mention of Gryffindor, old frustrations and resentments trickling in. "Is that why you hang around Holden Marshall?" He asked, trying and failing not to sound jealous. "Even though he's a huge brute?" He shrugged at her comments about teachers, old insecurities twisting in his mind. He didn't know if he would ever be able to reconcile the way he had been raised to think about school with the huge failure he was in practice. He was grateful that Vanity gave an easy conversational out. "What do you wanna do, then?"

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity's eyebrows went up slightly and she couldn't help a small smile as she took in Cornelius. Was that jealousy? She shrugged, playing with the zipper on her jacket. "We don't really hang out much anymore, but we're cool. He was kind of the worst date to me a few years ago, you remember. But turns out he's gay." She shrugged again. "It's not like we're best friends or anything, but he's not a bad guy." At his question about her future, she scrunched up her face a bit in thought "Nothing, ideally. Maybe something with art."

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

"Oh." Gay wasn't a thing Cornelius ever would have associated with someone like Holden Marshall, but what had the last year been for but teaching him that the things he assumed were usually bullsh*t? If Holden Marshall was captain of the pride parade now, then... well, stranger things had probably happened. Probably. Much more importantly it meant he wasn't interested in Vanity, which was a much more important development. "Well, good for him, then." He said with a small nod. It wasn't how he would have reacted to the news a couple of years ago, but he wasn't who he had been a couple of years ago. Cornelius nodded to Vanity's comment about her future, giving a slightly uncomfortable smile. "Well, more of a plan than I've got." He said in some attempt at a joke. "You'd be great, though. You're a great artist." Which was true, but it was also the third time he'd given the same compliment in the last five minutes. Sh*t.

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity was glad Corn didn't say anything bad about Holden, she would hate to have to push him into the pond. She stretched a little, smiling as he complimented her again She could get used to this. "Thanks." She said. "So you have no plans?" She asked him, tilting her head. "I thought you had some big fancy goals." He obviously hadn't cheated on his OWLs for nothing last year.

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius snorted when Vanity mentioned his plans, pushing over the pile of grass he'd gradually been building. "Won't ever happen now. Failed the entire family. Seven generations of Cornelius Seymours, all serving as top Aurors, being heroic, fighting in wars, all that sort of rubbish, and here I am. Trundling right in to f*ck it all up." He sighed, running his fingers through the soft blades of grass before looking up, out over the pond. "My dad hasn't talked to me since."

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity grimaced at Cornelius' words. She had known the whole OWLs debacle had been horrible, but she hadn't realized just how hard it had been on him. She hesitated for a moment. "Well, that sucks of your dad." She told him. "My parents largely ignore us too, but at least I have siblings to bother." She looked at him. "Did you really want to be an auror, though?" Somehow, she didn't think it really suited him.

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius shrugged, looking down at his grass-stained fingers again. "I've never been allowed to want anything else." He admitted quietly. "And I wouldn't know where to start. I'm not good at anything, I'm not handsome, nobody likes me, I've got basically no prospects at all. The current plan is to put off thinking about it at all until I'm out of school, then find a particularly nice ditch to die in." He grumbled, ripping a bit more aggressively at the grass under him.

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity listened to Cornelius, feeling bad for him at first. But when he went on and on, her pity turned into annoyance. She hated this kind of crap. "I see, so your plan is to throw yourself a pity party." She said sharply. "Like, yeah, it sucks that you won't be what your parents want you to be, but if you ask me, you never really wanted that anyway. You might actually be able to do something if you stop spiraling about why you can't do anything." She told him. "You don't need to be handsome to be successful and being liked is overrated anyway." She added with a shrug. "And you're like, seventeen You don't need to have everything mapped out yet. But just giving up is kind of dumb, sorry."

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius blinked at Vanity, taking in her words in slight disbelief. If he was smoother he probably would have agreed with her or something - said anything that would actually settle the situation, but smooth was yet another thing he did not have going for him. "That's easy to say when you're actually good at something!" He gestured roughly at her sketchbook as he layered on a fourth (F*ck! Desperate!) compliment by accident. "What am I going to do, professional guy people bump into and forget to apologise to? Mop lookalike champion? Write a book about the best ways to ruin your life before age seventeen? I've got nothing to contribute, and no grades even if I did!"

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity bristled at Cornelius' tone, even though she knew she kind of started it. But she frowned at him, shaking her head. "Do you think I just woke up one day able to draw, Cornelius? I might not have showed it off but I've worked my butt off to get good at it." She told him, gesturing to her sketchbook. "Stuff like that doesn't just happen, to anyone. So you can either feel bad for yourself or figure out what you want to do and work for that." She told him firmly. "What you can do is graduate with the grades you are able to get, get a job in a store or something and figure out what you want. It's better than wallowing in self pity."

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

"Oh, I never thought of f*cking trying!" Cornelius snapped back. "Sure, I spent hours with all the tutors my parents spent a fortune on, but I never considered trying!" He couldn't quite believe himself - he wanted to impress Vanity, but his off switch was a lot harder to flip than the on one. "All that time I spent in the library, I thought you were just supposed to sit in front of the book and absorb the knowledge! I didn't realise I was supposed to try! You've opened my eyes, oh wise one!"

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity zipped up her jacket angrily, starting to stuff things into her bag. "Yeah, trying things you don't even care about." She told him. "You're not listening to what I'm saying, so I guess I should go. I'm not going to let you yell at me for giving actual advice." She flipped her hair back. "I hope you find something you like doing and stop giving a sh*t about what your parents want, honestly. Or that you get better at cheating if you don't. Good luck."

 

[Corn Seymour VII]

Cornelius' blood ran cold when he realised Vanity was packing up, she was leaving, and he had ruined things on a profound, heretofore unmatched scale. Now that was a real talent. "F*ck, wait, no, I'm sorry, you're right, I'm being a useless sack of sh*t about this, I'll - it's whatever, I'll... I don't know... find some... remedial... whatever... if my father ever talks to me again, he might be able to get the Aurors office to overlook the cheating..." He trailed off uncertainly. It sounded like nonsense even to him, but what other jobs was he capable of that would impress a girl like Vanity? What was he going to do, card tricks at a dinner theatre?

 

[Vanity Mettlestone]

Vanity let out a deep sigh at Cornelius' obvious panic, she gave him a look. "Stop putting yourself down, okay? It's off-putting and stupid. You're not ugly, you're not useless, maybe you should stop telling yourself those things for a start." She said, not unkindly. "And if you want to be an auror, sure, you can see if you can do that." She said as she got to her feet, aware she sounded unconvinced. "But don't do that becuase someone else wants you to. That's stupid." She told him plainly. "That's kind of my whole point." She sighed. "I really should probably go, though."