[paris] in our bones | • a r i

Standing on the small Parisian balcony overlooking the quiet, cobbled street below, Prosper could see the Eiffel tower. Just the top of it. The night air was mild and comfortable and the venue had free glasses of champagne, so naturally Prosper had one in hand as he overlooked the city, listening to the chatter of the event behind him. Paris had always seemed like such a dream to Prosper. When he was younger and less well-travelled, Prosper had envisioned Paris as a haven of art and culture and beautiful things. He hadn't been wrong, of course, but he also hadn't been thinking big enough. The world extended outside of Paris, outside of France. It was bigger than Europe. Prosper wanted to see it all.

Aside from brief visits to Paris, Prosper had taken his sweet time getting back home.

Life on the move - attending parties and poetry slams and dance performances every other night - was really the kind of life that Prosper dreamed of having. He liked homemade liquor and nights sitting on rooftop with other wandering artists talking about ethics and the universe. He liked being covered in glitter dancing in foreign clubs, wrapped in the arms of a temporary love or choreographing dances with ballerinas in sunny studios just for fun. But that life wasn't so sustainable when he wasn't working. Prosper had burned through his meagre savings and then he'd burned through the sickles his parents had sent. He'd lived through a flurry of music and art and lovers, but it had only lasted for six weeks before he'd finally come back to Paris and returned home.

It had been less than a week since his return. Zara had been staying at Diederik's and Prosper hadn't told her he was back yet. He didn't really feel like facing her or the rest of the real world that would inevitably come crashing back to meet him as soon as he paid attention to it. He hadn't contacted Christéle, or his tutor or anyone. Not yet. Tonight he was attending the book launch of a mildly famous poet. Delaying reality just a little longer. There were canapes and free drinks and lots of people to mingle with; many artists and writers to connect with. The building was old and the top level was opened up into an events venue for weird artists like this one.

The whole event was over the top; just the way Prosper liked it. Aside from the main hall where the food and drinks were, there were also mismatched colourful doors magically inserted along one wall. Each one led to different rooms with different touch-related experience in them; so far Prosper had only been in the one with thick walls of thousands of pieces of string attached to the ceiling. Like a string forest. The poetry collection was called Tactile. Prosper thought it was kind of genius.

Paris had been good to Ariana. Excepting the incident with the bee, as she (with lukewarm fondness) referred to it, it had been a wonderful summer of independence. Although her refreshed will and motivation had been quickly sapped by the dome and everything that had happened, it hadn't been the fault of the French capital. Ari was still in contact with and still a patron of the works of the publishing house she had been working with, and one of the pieces they'd been in the early stages of going through with a new poet had finally been released. It had been a project she had been particularly excited about, having had the chance to correspond with the poet herself a few times, though under the publisher's name and not her own. The author thus had no idea who she was, but she still felt attached to the project, and she'd made her way to France for the launch party on a weekend.

Thérèse and Paul greeted her warmly, and Ari felt a comforting in her chest to see them and their reaction to her. Paul was her mother's friend, and his cofounder Thérèse had treated her like another daughter while she was there. With Freya and this, it felt affirming, like the new scars of the past year were not deeper than her strength. Taking leave of them as hordes of young writers hoping to get an in with the house swarmed them, she wandered off to the hors d'œuvres, twisting a glass of wine in her hand. France had always made her felt more independent, bolder. More capable of doing things she wasn't used to, and being her own person, freed of expectations of ties. At her heart, Ariana was deeply devoted to those ties and those expectations, but there was something freeing about this. Here, no one was watching her. She'd even dressed differently than she would have back home.

The burgundy liquid stained her lips as she peeked into the different rooms. Through the sky-blue door was an enormous infinity room, with rubbery, colorful, amorphous stalactites and stalagmites emerging from the floor and ceiling, lit with flickering, no-heat flames. The temperature was noticeably icier in this room than it was outside, and she rubbed her arms, wandering through the maze of pillars, hand sometimes reaching out to brush the smooth but yielding surfaces. It was strange how the room managed to obscure her view and yet make it seem like it went on forever. It made her feel like she wasn't really there.

She turned a corner, eyes searching for the center, and stopped herself inches from running into someone who had been standing quite still in the room. Ari's instinct veered toward the self-conscious, warring with the part of her arguing that she could be whatever version of herself she wanted to. "Oh, pardon," she exclaimed, surprised and suddenly very aware of her presence and the room. Eyes traveling up to the person's face, she blinked in surprise. "Prosper...?" she said. Ari wanted to snap back into the network that tied her; here was someone she sort of knew, had met enough times, to know something about her. Then again, most of those meetings had been in weird situations, like the victory ball and his birthday party. She lowered her glass and clasped it with both hands, aware of her dress and the odd dim blueish flickering lighting and the language she was using and everything unusual about where she was in this moment. Instead, she tried to sound like she belonged. Prosper was always charming. She tried to cut out her filler words to sound less awkward in anticipatory response. "Salut, I haven't seen you in a while. Have you read the poet's work?" She supplied a gentle smile.

Prosper made his way from the balcony to the colourful doors. He wanted to try some more of them. The teenager wasn't really worried about being here by himself; he was certain that he'd make friends tonight and there was the added benefit of knowing that they'd have something in common from the start. He tended to have an easier time in social situations than most, even foreign ones where he didn't know any of the people in attendance. Spending weeks on end travelling had been a whirlwind, but there was something nice about being able to speak the language of the country one was in, Prosper thought as he stepped through one of the doors.

The scene was incredible, of course. The whole thing was a marvel. Prosper was thrilled by the body of work and the effort they'd put into the launch party. He moved past a couple of people and in moments he felt like he was by himself in here. Was that a magical thing or was it mirrors? The young man didn't know. Rather than just look at it all, Prosper couldn't help but touch it. The collection of poems was called tactile, after all. He touched the rubbery pillars and ran his hands through the no-heat flames, feeling weirdly cold as he did so. Maybe he was expecting heat, he thought.

Prosper was broken from his thoughtful reveries as someone appeared behind him. He spun instinctively, taking a moment to place her. He raised his eyebrows, a well natured, charming smile appearing on his face. "Ariane," he said in response. Prosper flicked his pale grey eyes over her once, taking note of how beautiful she looked and matching the image in front of him with previous iterations. He'd only met with her a few times but she'd always looked stunning. Always dressed well. He had no idea how she looked or behaved in her day to day life, but he didn't really care. He liked his version of her. Placing one hand gently on her shoulder, Prosper leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. People didn't always do that in places like England, but he didn't really care about that either. Prosper was stubbornly French.

"Of course," he said with a deep nod. "I expect Tactile to change my life." The nineteen year old laughed lightly, but he wasn't entirely joking. "But how are you?" he asked, holding his champagne down to one side. "Graduated now, I suppose?" Prosper was older than her, but he didn't remember if it was by a year or more. Prosper held his arm out for her to take. He wanted to walk through this alien landscape with her.

Ari returned the bises as if habituated, although she had used it much less than she'd expected here. "Did Sonique?" That was the last one that had been released; it was a less ambitious work, since poetry easily related to sound, but it had been quite eye-opening. She'd read it as research for Tactile, of course. "I'll admit, this one is better," she added conspiratorially. She had completed it, naturally. The editing had slimmed it slightly, but it was mostly the same as the version she'd gotten to preview.

"I'm doing..." she paused for a moment, then said, "well." Firmly, like she wanted to believe. She'd been vulnerable with some of her friends lately, but Ari also wanted to get better. She wanted to be something of the person Paris made her feel like, someone who forged her own path and knew where she was walking. "Yes, I just graduated in June. It's...different. Some more freedom and time, but it's harder to connect with people when you don't see them every day." Like Prosper, she supposed. He was such a mystery.

Taking his arm, she pointed to a tall column in the center, a spring green like the tree of life but lit all around with blue and yellow spotlights which flickered over it. It was reflected millions of times in the mirrors surrounding them. "Have you made it to the center? I was trying to get there before I ran into you." As they wandered, she added, "what about you? Anything new since I last saw you? It happens so infrequently that I assume there must have been something big." It was a wonder they even crossed paths, really.

"I like this one better too," he agreed, matching her conspiratorial tone and smiling afterward. "It's genius." He'd read Sonique, but he hadn't been to the launch party. He'd heard good things from older artist friends who had been much more worldly and knowledgeable of such things at the time. When Prosper was freshly graduated, his world had been quite small.

"Not yet," he said simply, "this room is like a maze." A maze of mirrors and magic. The taller boy reached out with his free hand and ran the tips of his fingers along some of the rubbery sculptures as they walked. It was called tactile, after all. He figured he should do some touching. She asked him what had happened since he'd seen her last and he took a moment to respond. "All manner of things," Prosper answered with a half-smile. When had he last seen her, a year ago? So many things happened in that timeframe Prosper found it difficult to know where to begin.

"I started studying dance and then dropped it. I've been taking a lot of classes in acrobatics and gymnastics - hurting in places I didn't know could hurt," he added the last part as a joke, but he wasn't kidding. He thought he'd been flexible before, but after this past year of getting physical again, but in entirely new ways, Prosper felt like a contortionist or something. "I moved out of home, I fell in love, I went travelling. I don't know what hasn't happened since I saw you last." Prosper gave a slight shrug, careful not to disrupt their linked arms. He didn't know her very well, but he liked her. He was enjoying the contact. After a moment, he asked about her again. "So the free time is foreign," he said, full of insight, "but what about the freedom? What are your plans, what are you going to cross of your list now that you're a recognised adult?" What dreams did she have that needed fulfilling?

Wow, it had barely been out for half a day and he'd read it already. Ari was impressed--he must actually follow the poet. Ari herself was a much more casual imbiber of this kind of art, but then, she'd known from the first time they'd met that Prosper was very artistic. He'd started off by quoting Shakespeare, after all.

"Let's head that way then?" she asked, her French fluid. Her command of the language tended to ebb and flow, but she'd arrived a little before the start of the party and had had a few conversations to warm her up. Ari listened interestedly to the litany of things he had done in the past year. "Wow. That's...a lot." Ari's life moved much more slowly, in grand arcs. Something different each year, an overarching theme. The things Prosper said were so different--the freedom she mentioned spun out into action.

"So where are you at after all of that?" she asked, then considered what he had to say. What was on her list? Nothing, really. Auror training was a lot like school in that way. "The freedom is foreign as well," she laughed. "But in practice, it's not that different. I'm still taking classes. Auror training." That wasn't the type of thing that would interest someone like Prosper, she thought. "I moved in with a friend. I have the ability to come here on a weekend off. I'm...going on a date for the first time tomorrow?" Prosper didn't know anything about her. She wondered if he'd be surprised, and reached out to rub the top of a stalagmite to hide her embarrassment. 

"I suppose," he said. Life was just like that, he thought. Things were happening all the time. It was easy to list them all at once and make everything sound dramatic and sweeping. He was sure she'd be able to do the same, even if she wasn't as inclined as he to actually do so. His pale grey eyes took on a violet tinge in the bluish light. He flicked them in her direction as she spoke again. Where was he at? Well. Prosper considered the past six weeks and the way he'd acted. He considered the fact that it had done him good, and that while thinking about Zoé and Pierce was still a little painful, he could actually do it now without wanting to punch something. Most of the time, though, he just tried not to think about it. He'd spent weeks partying and now he was regaining his composure.

"I guess I'm somewhere new," he said simply, before elaborating just a little. It was so very Prosper Lachapelle to speak about his life like this; like it was some big adventure, or a novel or play. This is the next act, he thought to himself. "I'm ready for a new adventure." The man nodded.

When she spoke again, he listened to her list of things like he was listening to a story. He glanced at her sharply when she mentioned the date thing though, not really believing it straight away. "First one with someone new?" he asked, a little puzzled, "or.. Were the boys in Hogwarts blind?" He slipped a little compliment into his question. She'd said she was going on a date with someone but just a touch of flirting never hurt anyone. Besides, he was genuinely curious. If she hadn't ever gone on a date before... well it just seemed so unlikely that he wondered why.

"Is everything an adventure?" she inquired. Ari used to say she liked adventures--before she got to Hogwarts and settled into Hufflepuff, she'd thought she'd wanted to be a Gryffindor--but time and...experience had brought a bit of weight to bear on those tendencies. Ari didn't seek out adventure so much anymore. She sought out companionship and happiness, but not so much adventure.

Ari turned her head toward him at the surprise in his tone. It made her realize just how little he knew of her; it wasn't at all surprising to anyone who'd been at school with her. Ari blushed a little bit at the suggestion that it was surprising. Ariana considered herself rather plain, brown hair, brown eyes, skinny build, thin, straight features, slightly below average height. "First ever, basically. My friend set me up on a blind date with one of my friends a few years back by tricking both of us, but we didn't really go through with it once we found out what she was trying to do." Her tone was light, although she was feeling faintly embarrassed. Maybe the surprise had been at her lack of experience. Freya was much better situated than she was to be talking to essential strangers about her experience with traditional teenage rites of passage.

"My friends will tell you it's mostly me, though," Ari said candidly. "You might not remember but I brought a friend to your birthday party two years ago. She's been giving me a hard time about it recently," she laughed.

They had reached the center now, where a full gleaming blue column with green plant-like vines curling around it appeared to hold up the roof. Small tendrils in the other colors of the rainbow split off from the vines, and faint glowing crystals were lodged throughout the column. She reached out to touch some of them, and they dimmed at her touch and then brightened in a new color. They felt like ice. "Yggdrasil," she said, looking it up and down. The World Tree. Ari could no longer see the entrance due to some clever optical illusioning.

"In retrospect? Everything." Prosper gave a lazy smile at this remark, exchanging glances with her like they were in on some kind of secret whether she knew it or not. Retrospectively, every chapter of his life could be separated into various adventures, with different climaxes and resolutions. He thought about his life in these sorts of flowery terms all the time. Of course, in the moment life didn't feel like something so easily categorised. It was messy. Chaotic. But once the dust settled, it was easy to put everything into neat compartments.

"First ever," he repeated curiously, satisfied with the light blush gracing her cheeks in response to his words. Prosper knew it probably shouldn't, but knowing that she hadn't dated anyone before was changing the way he thought about her. He'd always seen Ariane as a classic sort of beauty - though he did suppose he'd met her when she was wearing a ballgown, one of his all-time favourite looks for a woman - with pretty friends. The kind of girl who went to parties in France when they lived in England, at only sixteen. The kind of young woman who attended poetry book launches like this one, wine glass in hand. None of that screamed I've never had a boyfriend to him. He wondered if she'd ever kissed anyone. He wondered if she'd ever done anything more...

He stopped wondering as she spoke again. Back to the present, Prosper. "Blonde?" he asked, casting his thoughts back to his birthday party. Honestly, a lot of it was a blur for him. That had been fairly early on in the night though. "Sort of pretty?" Sort of, as in totally-not-his-type-but-definitely-still pretty? That kind of pretty. The pair reached the centre of the room finally and Prosper smiled again as he looked up at the structure in front of him. She was a good distraction, but he remembered now why he'd come here in the first place. Prosper really did have a wide appreciation for many forms of art. He watched her put her hand out then followed suit, touching the crystals and then tracing his fingers along the vines. It was quite a sight.

"You should tell your friend that the foundation of women's liberation was women's autonomy," Prosper joked. She was talking a lot about friends encouraging her to do things and he wondered if that's what this whole first-date thing was about. He supposed they lived in different worlds. Zara was always complaining about him bringing girls over. He didn't think it could get more opposite than that.

Their arms were still linked and he thought that seemed appropriate. Tactile. "If you'd been a Beauxbatons girl I probably would have pursued you at some point," he added with a relaxed half-smile. There was a little humour in his tone, but he wasn't really joking. He was sure that he'd have flirted with her if they'd gone to school together. Prosper sipped his champagne, still looking up at the sculpture of the world tree.

Listening to him talk about how he saw his life, Ari wondered who Prosper would be if he had been British. How would the war have affected someone like him? Could someone like him even have grown up in a country shadowed by the first war, much less the second one she had lived through? Ariana really wasn't sure. She'd never met anyone quite like him before, after all, as little as she knew about him. Her face fell unconsciously. Imagining her past as a series of adventures was trivializing. Senseless.

Ari could feel her regular life and regular fight tugging on her; her dress suddenly felt awkward on her body. She so wanted to just enjoy her evening, though, and looked back up to catch his eyes, trying to fall back into the conversation. Prosper didn't know anything about that, about where she'd been. Anything he knew could have been thirdhand hearsay from some of her classmates who had transferred, or just the news, but it had been three years, and memory faded. Three years already? "Really pretty," she corrected swiftly with a grin, nodding and relaxing a little as she thought fondly of her friend. Freya sparkled.

She stifled a laugh. "I would consider it, but I owe her badly, so I'm afraid I have to listen for now," she smiled. "It'll probably be fun at least. Funny is his middle name." The nice thing about going on a first date with someone like Jeremy was that it didn't exactly make her nervous. It might not bode well for romance, but it was a lot easier on her.

Her glass was raised halfway to her mouth when he made his last comment, and was swiftly retracted in a brachial spit take. This kind of thing twice in two days was not normal for her. "Why do you think that?" she asked, feeling flushed again. Thankfully he wasn't looking in her direction. He didn't know anything about her--but then, if she had been a Beauxbatons girl, who would she have been? Not the same person, she knew with conviction. Maybe someone who would have responded to such pursuit. "I mean--you hardly know me." She smiled, though. There was something about sharing the odd moments they had that strung together a kind of connection in spite of that. As long as she kept herself a little bit outside of herself, it was easy.

"Mmm," he agreed distantly, with enough sincerity not to be offensive. The curly-haired blonde girl hadn't really been his type. Blondes never were. Prosper acknowledged the shallowness of his aesthetic preferences, but there were a few things that had always been turn offs for him. Blonde hair, for one. Ballerinas and dancers - maybe they reminded him too much of Zara. Lots of tattoos, too. He'd always liked smooth, clear skin best. The friend she was referring to left no lasting impression on him. Of the two, he knew which one he thought was more beautiful.

"Class clown type?" he asked politely, "I hope it goes well." Funny, she'd said. Vaguely, he wondered what kind of first date he'd have been. Handsome? Charming? Maybe he would have been funny too. Prosper could remember his first date fairly clearly. It had happened in his fourth year, around the time he'd started noticing girls and not long after a rather flattering growth spurt. It was strange to look back at his younger self. He did so fondly, but was always a little surprised to remember just how cocky and stupid he'd been. He'd thought he known everything about women and flirting and people in general. In reality, he'd hardly known anything at all. The man led her away from the structure in the centre of the room gently, wanting to walk through the exhibit just for the sake of it. Glittery lights bathed them gently in blues and purples.

Prosper wet his lower lip with a flick of the tip of his tongue. He didn't answer for a moment. Flicking his grey eyes down to his drink and then up to meet her gaze, he gave a well-natured smile. "I don't know if I can answer that without being too forward," he admitted. The man laughed lightly, shaking his head a little. "I mean... I think I know enough to be - or have been - interested? You're well spoken, clearly have an interest in the arts - something I value." He paused again, still smiling but looking away as if trying to find the right words to explain his next thought. "You're also gorgeous?" He offered this with a slight lilt a the end of his sentence as if posing a question, though he clearly wasn't asking anything.

"Trust me, if you'd been near me at fifteen I would have been quoting Shakespeare at you like an idiot." It was half a joke. The first thing he'd ever said to her had been a Shakespeare quote.

Prosper's overly neutral response to her comment about Jeremy made her feel slightly foolish, as though underlining that she hadn't totally through her actions. The reasons to say yes had seemed to clearly outweigh the reasons to say no, yesterday, but a good portion of those reasons had been related to just...going on a date, for once, not necessarily the person she was going with. She hadn't magically manifested more than friendly feelings for him in the last twenty-four hours, and to hear him described harshly but realistically only highlighted her reservations. She loved his company, but his image fizzled and faded in any future she imagined.

Ari merely looked down with a little smile in quiet noncommittal assent, not wanting to linger on the topic, encouraged by their movement away from the bright center of the exhibit. Instead she glanced towards him in the intervening moment between her casual question and his response. She blinked, taken aback. How much more forward was he thinking of being? "Mmm," she murmured in response to his list of characteristics, eyes cast left in thought, struck by how they were things that she doubted would make the list of Freya, or Camm, or Jeremy, whose lists probably had something about a level head and advice and fighting. They weren't things that were false, although she thought she was more restricted to art that was written than he might have assumed. Was this the glimpse of who she could have been if she'd gone to Beauxbatons? Ari didn't think she'd have become captivated by DADA if she hadn't been raised by parents who had lived through the First Wizarding War in a country that idolized The Boy Who Lived.

"Oh--" Ari looked back up to catch Prosper's grey eyes, surprised. It was one thing to be told something like that at sixteen, dressed in a formal gown, everyone from multiple schools on display. She'd assumed it was just the kind of thing Beauxbatons boys said, especially to girls they were never going to see again. It was another thing entirely to be told that in plain language by him now, speaking like old acquaintances, both older and him surely more experienced. She'd have to be naive not to still assume he said this to all sorts of women, but her breath still caught in her throat. It wasn't the kind of thing people told her much. Ariana tucked her hair behind her ear, gaze drifting away from the classically handsome young man uncertainly before she caught herself in an avoidance pattern, admonishing herself. Looking back up determinedly, she smiled, holding her voice firm and genuine. "I mean, thank you."

She was thankful that the next statement broke the tension, and laughed out loud, gesturing with her glass to the side and back, as if to the past. "I think we've been there already, if I recall," Ari smiled, deciding to verbalize the thought she'd just had. "I thought maybe that was just the kind of thing French boys said to girls they were never going to see again."

Prosper smiled a little at her surprise, satisfied by it in a familiar way. He didn't know why this moment - one he'd experienced many times before, with many girls - always felt so good. How could someone that looked like her actually feel surprised when someone told them that they were gorgeous? He tried to focus on his memory of her blonde friend, the one she'd described as really pretty. He could see how, by some conventional standards, the blonde might be prettier than the girl standing beside him currently. Maybe. Prosper found it difficult to be any sort of objective; he'd always had his type, and it dictated all of his thoughts about beauty quite strongly.

He nodded when she thanked him, perhaps trying to encourage her belief in his words. Sure, he was flirting with her - that was obvious, at least to him - but it wasn't as if he didn't genuinely believe it. "Ah," he said with a smile, "indeed." He had quoted Shakespeare at her, hadn't he? At the time, he'd probably thought he was being exceptionally smooth. He still idolised the bard, but he saved his Shakespearean pick-up lines for very specific situations these days. Still, it didn't seem as if she'd had a negative impression of him afterward, so he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

"Well," he said thoughtfully, turning his grey eyes ahead and away from the glowy purplish light that played across her skin, "I suppose it was my hope that that wouldn't be the case." Prosper smiled again, mostly to himself, though he was aware of her gaze on him too. "Maybe they do," he conceded after a moment. His thoughts turned to some of his friends that had been there that night. Caspar, Diederik. "I think at that age that was just the sort of thing I said to any girl I thought was beautiful," he added honestly. Prosper gave her a cheeky smile before glancing ahead again as they approached a handleless door. "I think this is the exit," he said, grey eyes drawn to the strange, shimmery texture of the door.

Ari blushed. "I guess you did invite me to your birthday party, so it wasn't exactly the case." That had been a wild night that she and Freya had been on the periphery of; Ari thought Edmund had had many questions he'd been too polite to ask his little sister when he came to pick them up. It wasn't as if that night had made her think that of him any less, though. There had been the whole issue of him kissing that poor girl, and really there had just been so many girls... Ariana wasn't sure what she thought of the older Prosper yet, other than that he was very nice as always.

She reached out her hand towards the door as they neared it. She had a strange sensation as her hand sank into it--not the way it did at Platform 9 3/4, which felt like the illusion it was, but in viscous sort of way, pooling around her hand before rebounding and swinging a little away from them. A parting gift from the installation, it seemed. The door swung out into the main hallway, which was just as crowded as she had left it, chatter from the well-dressed guests blending into a sort of white noise. A waiter walked by with a tray of rillettes, and Ari couldn't resist plucking one off. Ari's cooking was pretty simple, like what her dad made at home but less mature, and it was a treat to be in Paris again at an event where she was surrounded by a bunch of little hors d'oeuvres.

Turning back to Prosper after a bite, she smiled. "Any other plans for the night? Have you been in the other rooms?" She checked her watch; her Portkey back to London, the last of the night, was in about an hour. She'd promised her parents she'd be home for dinner on Sunday, and it was easier to sleep in her own bed anyway.