[mp] hallow's eve in hogsmeade

He laughed at her reaction to him, shrugging, liking that she agreed anyway. That's why Freya was always so cool to hang with, she always went with the flow. They could have fun doing literally almost anything. "Left it is," he said with a smart little salute in her direction, laughter bubbling up in him at the sound of her giggles.

Danny didn't know if it was the drinks or just the feel in the air tonight, but he felt light on his feet, happy. As they came to the next intersection, they stopped and Freya turned the question on him. He put on his 'thinking' face, licked his index finger and then put it up in the air as if to detect a breeze. Like that was going to tell them anything on which way to go. Still, he went with it and nodded towards the right. "This way's the right way," he said, then grinned at Tricky with a ridiculous smile. "Get it?" he asked, proud of his very poor pun.

As they were walking down the next lane, he glanced over at  her and then nudged her side with his elbow. "What are the chances we get out of here alive?" he said in his most spooky Halloween voice, giving her a wide-eyed look trying to be serious before busting into laughter as two little kids rushed past them.

She knew the shots had really hit now because she couldn't stop laughing. She laughed when Danny held up his freshly-licked finger, and she laughed again at his stupid joke (though this time it was more affectionate-laughter rather than amused). “You’re a Ravenclaw at heart, Dan,” Freya said seriously, patting his chest before grinning once more as they started off again.

Freya almost tripped over some small kids when Danny did his Halloweeny scare. “Probably lower if I murder some children,” she told him, turning around and walking backwards as she watched the kids run off. “So small though,” she commented, looking at him. They didn’t even look old enough to be students yet; Freya wondered if they lived in the village, or if they were someone’s siblings.

“When I have kids I’m gonna make them do group dress-ups with me,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’ll do a big beedle the bard group costume for Halloween,” she added, turning back around to face the front.

"I really am, aren't I?" he said seriously, nodding in agreement. "I love reading and I'm so smart and I look good in blue, right?" he said as he patted her hand on his chest, feeling very warm and not just because of his epic pizza costume.

He reached out a hand as she stumbled over the kids even though he wasn't much help himself since he was tripping over his own shoelaces that became untied at some point. "Little Red is gonna murder some innocent kids? That's not the way I remember the story going," he said with a grin as he followed her as she walked backwards.

"Oh yeah?" he asked the intangible idea of having kids and doing something with them was fun to think about considering it was all hypothetical. He took big strides to catch up with her, wobbling a bit as he straightened his pizza costume on his shoulders. "When I have kids I'm gonna name one Crunch or Crush or something totally wicked and we'll have booger fights and I'll teach him everything about the best quiddtich team--" he brought his hand up to fake whisper behind it. "--Puddlemere. Group costumes are epic though. Kind of upset you didn't want to go as dingleberries with me and Jere though..." he said shooting her a grin.

“So good, so good,” Freya agreed, waving a hand. When he mentioned Puddlemere she had to laugh again. “Dannyyy,” she whined. Puddlemere was her favourite team for her whole life, but then Finn had gone and got nabbed by the Magpies, hadn’t he?

“Ooh!” Freya said suddenly, “I’ll have seven kids and we can make a whole quidditch team! Or wait, no… Six of them and me. Or, I guess, five of them and me and my partner? If we wanna play too…” She trailed off for a moment, trying to imagine it. She had six siblings, Danny had seven; they could both make whole Willbond and Trickett teams, just with their brothers and sisters. It had always been nice, she thought, to have a close friend who understood.

“Oh my god Dan, did I ever tell you that my cousin Shelby is in the same dorm as your sister? Wendy?” She laughed. When she’d found out that Shelby and Wendy were friends, or friendly at least, she’d meant to tell him about it. Other things had gotten in the way, though, around that time. “Another Trickbond pair I guess,” she said with a sunny smile, leaning them down another left path.

“My cousin told me she knew her.” The alcohol wouldn’t let her stop there, though. “And I…” She laughed again, then shook her head. “No, no, no.” she said quickly, “Never mind.”

"No no no, nuh uh, not hearing it. You're a traitor to the blue and gold, it just breaks my heart," he told her dramatically, clutching his heart, as he expressed his outrage and disappointment in the fact that she had traded to the stinking birds over their once-beloved Puddlemere team. He was always quick to point out when Puddlemere was doing better than Montrose in stats, trades, or anything related. Finn was a great guy sure, but Danny was a diehard United fan.

"A whole quidditch team? Wicked," he said nodding along with this trail of idea. The thought had never occurred to him but he could see himself blowing a whistle and trying to teach four year olds how to do quidditch drills and end up just flying into each other which was even funnier. "No, you gotta have a few spares. Kids are dangerous on brooms. Go big," he told her with a smile. Besides its not like either of them were a stranger to big families.

"Shelby? I think she mentioned it," he said, the name sounding very vaguely familiar but no actual details coming to mind. He had written Wendy a few letters and spent some time with her over the summer. Even though she was the youngest and the age gap between them felt huge, he had always liked looking after his younger siblings. Except Mark. That kid had a sarcastic streak and a wicked tongue that rivaled the devil's. "Yeah I guess, but we're the best Trickbond pair, right?" he asked, smiling over at her. "Wendy's cute and all but she's not as cute as me right?" He gave her his best megawatt smile, batting his eyelashes at her and laughing at himself in the process.

He gave her a questioning look as she took a detour from her current train of thought and he stepped in front of her, walking backwards now like she had done earlier. "No you can't do that," he whined a little. "Spill the beans, Tricky."

Freya sighed a big sigh. She secretly still cheered for Puddlemere, of course, but officially Montrose was her team. Especially if they were playing each other. “A few spares?” she complained. Five kids already sounded like a pretty monumental effort; she wasn’t opposed to a big family at all, but she was enjoying her youth just fine, thanks. The idea of spending a decade or more popping out kids wasn’t appealing at all.

“Shelby Trickett,” Freya said, completely unnecessarily, with a proud big-sister type nod. “Of course, sure… Though I think last time I saw Wendy she was like seven,” the blonde said with a laugh. “Next break we should organise a group thing. Oooh we should get all their gossip, yknow, see who likes who and all that.” Playing matchmaker to twelve-year-olds was weirdly appealing? Freya shrugged it off.

“Noooooo it’s stupid – it’s too embarrassing,” Freya whined, waving a hand. Then she laughed again, because the idea of sharing what she was thinking about sharing just sounded so dumb in her head. He’d probably make fun of her for it, but she supposed that would be better than if he took it seriously.

"Yeah, just a few," he said with a nod, smiling at her pouty face. "We can always adopt. I'm sure Jere is always looking for a new family with good breakfast to take him in. He can be one of our spares," Danny added with a grin. Jere would fit right in with his imaginary kids. Hell, he would fit right in with his imaginary kids. He wondered if he even knew the first thing about parenting. Wow, his thoughts were getting a little too much for him, not that all the alcohol was helping his focus much.

"Oh yeah, when she tried to sneak on the train right?" Danny said, smiling at the memory of his youngest sister wanting to go to Hogwarts so bad with the rest of the siblings that she had tried to sneak onto the train at King's Cross. Danny had been the one to hoist her up on his shoulders and carry her about, playing for a few minutes, running up and down along the train, before he settled her back with their parents and promised to write. Not that he actually did write, he was never good with owls, but it was the idea that counted?

"Wendy doesn't like anyone. I'm pretty sure she won't ever date, ever," Danny said with authority, puffing up his chest like he thought a protective older brother should and then laughed as the breath wheezed out of him. "Group thing would be fun though."

Danny narrowed his gaze and shook his head at her, still not accepting her excuses. He even threw in some pokes at her side as he said, "C'mon Tricky. I'm One Big Embarrassment so you can't do much worse than me. Tellll meee," he coaxed as he poked at her again.

Freya’s abstract imaginings became mildly less abstract as Danny painted himself into the picture. Suddenly it wasn’t Freya and a blank partner and their five quidditch kids, but herself and Danny and Jeremy as their adopted son. She laughed at the idea as it formed in her head. She nodded along with the train mention, though she was fairly sure she’d seen Wendy at Danny’s place once or twice after that.

“Sure sure,” Freya said, rolling her eyes. Her older brothers had been protective about her like that, at one point – she was sure they still would if they could get away with it, too. She smiled again when he laughed, though. Danny could be an idiot sometimes but he wasn’t super macho like some of her older male relatives.

“Ugh,” Freya slapped his pokey fingers away, dancing away from him as they walked. “Okaaayyyy,” she said in between giggles, the word drawn out dramatically. “Shelby’s really into, like, star charts and stuff? And when we hung out in the summer it was just after that time you and I made out–” she glanced ahead for this part “–and stuff was kinda weird?” It hadn’t been very funny at all back then, but Freya was laughing now. Everything felt so distant and feathered at the edges. Even making out with Danny, which had felt a lot more dramatic at the time.

“So this is so dumb right but I asked her about our, like, compatibility, I guess?” Freya covered her face with her hands, then let them drop to her sides, grinning and shaking her head about the whole thing. Her cheeks were flushed, though that was probably the alcohol, she reasoned.

As she danced away, it made him want to poke her some more. And he tried but his shoelaces tripped him up and he almost face planted right there in the dirt, just one big, drunk pizza slice flat on the ground. He managed to get an arm under to stop himself from crushing his nose though and bounced, or really wobbled, back up to both feet.

"What are star charts?" he asked, interjecting as she talked about her cousin. At the mention of the make out incident, Danny grinned at her. Alcohol always gave him a bit of liquid courage and he felt more goofy than usual. Normally he might have glanced away awkwardly and tried to cover it with a joke or distraction, but tonight he leaned into it and smiled at her smarmily, playfully. "Weird but the most epic moment of your whole life right?" he said with a waggle of his brows, stopping to try to lean dramatically against a corn stalk and almost falling over again when it gave way.

"Our compatibility?" he asked dumbly again. "Stars know that stuff?" He was clueless, but what was more fun was her reaction to the whole thing. He reached out to gently hold on to her wrists and try to pull them away from her face, trying to peek around her fingers to see her expression. "So, like, are we compatible?" Danny asked in his best girly voice, almost taking on a terrible American accent as he smiled at her. He didn't know what the hell she was talking about but the fact that she was even a teeny bit embarrassed to tell him made him all the more curious. Plus.. she had asked about them? Them together. An us thing. A little flutter of something flickered to life in his chest.

She half-ignored half-didn’t-hear Danny’s comments. She was laughing and bouncing as they went down different lanes, turning left and right without paying attention to which way they’d come from when they came to dead ends and had to backtrack. She adjusted her ponytail clumsily, shooting Danny a grin.

“It’s so dumb,” Freya said, shaking her head, referencing the fact she'd asked Shelby at all rather than Shelby’s system of future-telling or whatever it was. The blonde was quite superstitious; she happened to have quite a bit of faith in her younger cousin’s processes. “I think she needed like, your birth time or whatever to know for sure,” Freya said with a shrug. Now that she’d started answering, everything was coming out, though she couldn’t remember exactly what Shelby had said, and was sure her current version was extremely simplified.

“But our star signs I think… Are not the best for dating, she said?” Freya laughed, her cheeks flushed. “Anyway, she told me I shouldn’t start anything new because of Saturn or whatever,” She said, adding another shrug this time. The pair turned into another dead end. “I’m totally normal though, like I don’t just ask my twelve-year-old cousin for dating advice,” she laughed again, “I did talk to like, Ari and stuff too.” She was talking too much, and vaguely aware of it, but unable to stop. Freya was a generally chatty person! When she drank, that quality tended to really shine.

"Ohhhhh," he said as she explained, as if he understood whereas really he was just more confused. But he went with it, just like usual. He was pretty sure that Freya could tell him she had just seen a posse of hippos singing wrock and he would believe her and probably even agree that they had voices of angels. Wow, where were they? His thoughts jumbled as they ran into another dead end and he had to turn slower than usual so things didn't start feeling sideways again.

Still the fact that her twelve year old cousin had some knowledge about the stars saying they wouldn't be good at dating was a little disheartening. Not that he had thought about dating Freya. Recently. Not that much.. He tried to smile at her and give a shrug, one shoulder of his pizza costume lifting breezily. "Guess it's a good thing we're just friends then?" he said, trying to cover with humor like he usually did.

"You talked with Ari about us?" he asked, surprised even though a second later he knew he shouldn't be. "I talked with Jere," he admitted with a side glance at her. It was a chapter that was closed so what was the harm in asking now, he thought. "What did Ari say about me? Or ..us?"

“Right,” Freya answered, still smiling, still feeling light and mildly embarrassed and approaching it all with humour. After a beat, she raised an eyebrow at him. “Though, you know, I didn’t ask her about how good we are as friends, so that’s up in the air I guess,” she said, trying her best to be serious but cracking up mid-sentence. “Maybe we’re not compatible at all,” she added, bumping him lightly with her shoulder. Her red cloak fluttered behind her as she skipped ahead, swinging around yet another turn of the maze to peek around the corner.

Freya snorted. “Yeah I know,” she said, looking over her shoulder as he caught up. She remembered the sheepish look on his face, the way his cheeks had reddened just a touch when she’d asked him how many times he and Jeremy had high fived. She and Ari had talked about a lot of things. “I had a lot of mimosas that morning?” she offered, “So uhhhh, I don’t remember it so well.” Freya laughed as she started walking again.

“I was all, I feel bad, did I lead him on,” she said, doing her best whiny impression of herself as she glanced up at the dark sky, looking for stars. She spoke quickly, flippantly, a sunny smile on her face the whole time. “And then I was all I'm scared I ruined our friendship – or something.” She shrugged as she looked back at him. “Lots of mimosas,” she said again apologetically.

"Up in the air?" he said, staring at her and blinking a few times, giving her a playfully stern look that he couldn't even hold for that long because he stumbled over his shoes again. "No offense, but your little cousin might not know anything at all," he told her with a shake of his head as he stuck out his bum to bump it against her before she fluttered away. "Hey, maybe we should swing by Baby Trickett's house and make sure her calculations or whatever were right," he called out after her, still a little outraged at the idea that they weren't 'compatible at all,' not even as friends. Seemed like hogwash to him.

Danny jogged to catch up with her, muttering under his breath about a certain underclassman know-it-all Ravenclaw, his pizza costume bumping along his shoulders, winded from even those few steps. "Gotta go do another one of those yogalates classes with you, Tricky," he said, catching his breath, clearly very much out of shape, but mostly looking forward to a class full of girls and Freya in particular in very tight athletic wear. No wonder Greg was in the gym so much.

He nodded as she gave her mimosas explanation, trying not to read too much into it. All he could remember was eating way too much greasy diner food the next day and then apparating to her flat at an ungodly hour not too long after to apologize. "No no no," he said shaking his head, "I told you it was my fault for kissing you and you know, being so drop dead handsome that you can't resist me," Danny joked even though clearly that wasn't entirely true considering they really hadn't done anything that night.. or anything since. Even if he wanted to venture into that arena again, and he certainly felt like he did whenever they hung out like this and things were easy and fun and free, Danny wasn't even sure how to go about it. Freya already knew all of his best pick up lines and sadly none of them had earned a ten out of ten.

His mind was a little slow at processing so it came back around to the 'not compatible' bit. He gave her a pouty face as they turned the next corner of the maze, giving his best puppy dog face. "Do you really think we're not compatible, Tricky?"

“Do you know what time you were born?” Freya asked over her shoulder, giggling. “That’s what she needs for it to be accurate.” The idea of showing up to her aunt and uncle’s house, kind of drunk, with a boy dressed like a pizza slice, to ask Shelby if they’d be good together was hilarious. There was no reason for it, but Freya couldn’t stop skipping ahead, bouncing as she went.

“We can do one with Brita soon,” Freya said lightly. She quietly lamented the fact that she’d been skinny and athletic enough in school that she’d briefly had abs, and no longer did. That was before she’d had access to delivery food, and before she’d been able to apparate to get snacks in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t trade the latter for the former – pizza was too good, she thought, glancing at Danny – but both would be good. Oh well.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Freya said, waving a hand, still smiling. As she bounced, her ponytail bounced behind her. She had a lot of energy apparently. The pair turned another corner and Danny asked her a question. She turned around to face him, her eyebrows raised, still smiling. “Ah?” He was pouting, so it was probably a joke. Cool. She slowed to a stop. “I mean, If that’s what the stars say...” She said lightly, offering a shrug. She was a little breathless from the bouncing, but laughed anyway, feeling a bit awkward that the conversation had come this way. She glanced at the turn to her left. They were right beside the exit now.

She looked back at Danny, feeling like her answer wasn’t really enough. The blonde was suddenly aware of how dark it was in here, and how close they were. She couldn’t quite lose herself in that headspace though, considering he was dressed like her favourite food. “I dunno. I mean, we’re such good friends,” she said, giving the same answer she’d given Ari for what felt like a year. “So it’s hard to say how we’d be in a different context... It’d be dumb to risk ruining it, too. Wouldn’t it.”

The blonde was quiet for a moment before smiling and reaching out to poke one of the many toppings on his costume affectionately. “I noticed the pineapple though,” she said, amused. Danny hated pineapple, so her thinking was that he must have picked one with it on there just for her. He hadn't come as a nacho, either, but a pizza slice. In their trio, pizza was kind of her thing. “I think that’s the exit,” she said, nodding at the path back out to the village.

"What time I was born?" he said, laughing through the words with an incredulous look. He kept trying to catch up to her, but she was skipping ahead and he always seemed one step behind. How did she have this much energy? Not that he was complaining. He was thinking he could follow Freya anywhere. "You gotta be crazy. Who even knows that kind of stuff? I s'ppose I could owl me mum and ask," he added.

"Sure, sure, you just let me know the day and I'll be there. No Jere this time though," he said remembering what had happened. "I swear it was Jere, not me who let one rip!" he said defensively, remembering the fateful moment had been during the upside down dog or whatever the pose was called. Danny considered himself a gentleman and always claimed his toots, but that one had not been him.

As she turned to face him, he gave her his best pouty, puppy face, scuffing his shoe in the dirt as he shrugged. "The stars are stupid," he muttered but couldn't keep his grumpy straight face the moment she started laughing. Why did it always make him smile when she laughed? He wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or if it was just Freya, but he got kind of caught up by the way her eyes shined up at him. Why was she so fun to be around and didn't mind how many dumb things he did? Why did he feel a little stuck with where he was at? He had been friend zoned by more girls than he could count, he and Jere were just joking a few months ago about the absurdity of them getting girlfriends. Except Jere had managed to get out of his own way and lucked out with Montse, even if there was still that 5% that she was made up.

Danny's pout became more pronounced as she went on about how good friends they were, glancing away at the dark midnight blue of the sky. He didn't agree necessarily so he shrugged and gave her a grin. "Never know until you try, Tricky," he said as he glanced back at her and then made a joke because what else was he going to do. "Of course, I'm such a heartbreaker so you wouldn't be able to handle allll of this," he said with a wave and what he imagined was a suave expression before he cracked up as she poked at him, dancing away from her hands. "Hey, watch the pineapple," he said protecting his pineapple bits. "Figured if I was going as pizza, I might as well go all out for you," he said with a roll of his eyes. "Even if you have the strangest taste buds."

He glanced toward the exit and nodded. "Race ya?" he asked with a smile, knowing he would probably be more wobbling than running at this point but hell, when was the next time he was going to dressed as a pizza in Hogsmeade with Tricky running through a corn maze? "Ready, set--" he said and then was gone, laughing hysterically before he even said go.