claire de lune | arden

Her cheeks ached a little — probably from too much smiling. “I mean it’s this or grading first year short answer papers,” she answered, bumping his side very lightly with her elbow. She didn’t have any classes tomorrow; she’d do the work tomorrow night or something. Either this flower thing concluded before daylight and she could get a nap in while it was dark, or she’d eat breakfast and try to at least delay a sleep until the afternoon. Even though she had the whole weekend to recover, she wasn’t one to sleep all day. Felt like too much of a waste.

He started to speak, but then paused. She waited a beat, then prompted gently: “Mmm?” Even though she’d relaxed into the space they’d made, and was very comfortable with the slow and vibey way time seemed to be flowing, she was impatient to hear the rest of his thoughts. Nice, he said. “Yeah,” she agreed distantly, wishing he’d elaborate, or throw a synonym in there, at least. She snuck another glance at him and her smile widened at the sight of his grin.

She rolled her eyes again, still smiling. “Ugh, can you stop that,” she said, her tone mock-accusatory and teasing. “I can’t stop smiling. My cheeks hurt.” Dash touched her hand — still tucked inside her sleeve — to her cheek, massaged the it lightly. She caught his gaze and laughed, only remembering partway through that they were supposed to be quiet. Or had she imagined that? Did the flowers hate laughter? The thought made her laugh some more, and she covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle it, her eyes sparkling.

Arden agreed with his confession though Neville found himself wishing that she spoke more. He bit into his smile, glancing to where she happened to be looking back at him. Maybe it was the quiet comfort that came with the fact that they had been standing there for Merlin knew how long, wrapped under a blanket and waiting for an elusive flower to bloom or bloom not bloom, but he didn't feel as on edge as he remembered he was capable of. He held the contact, eyes brimming curiously.

"Stop what?" His smile broadened at the mention, and then again when Dash said that her cheeks hurt. It was nice to know that he wasn't alone in that, he thought with a laugh to mirror her again. It was hard not to feed into the infectious nature of the conversation. Neville was all too easily finding himself lost.

"Sorry," He added, still grinning, and despite the fact that no part of him was feeling guilty by any stretch of the imagination.

Arden covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her laughter and he followed her eyes belatedly back to where they had been glued to, waiting for a sign of something. "It's just the light we have to worry about..." He explained, nodding to the empty firepit, suddenly aware he had probably started whispering for no real reason. Bancroft hadn't mentioned any noise constraints, but it seemed plausible enough at the time...

Neville let out a satisfied breath, venturing to touch the back of her hand with his fingertips gently, nudging it away from her smile.

That ought to not be covered, he thought.

Sorry. Dash laughed a little more for no reason, or perhaps because no, he wasn’t sorry at all, and she could tell. That was fine — she wasn’t sorry either. She shook her head in the dark, thinking about how ridiculous this whole thing was. She barely knew this guy, had such little personal investment in this whole flower business; it all felt so bizarre to her right now, but maybe that was just because she felt like she was floating.

Neville nodded at the fire pit, explaining (again!) that there couldn’t be any light. “I know! I know, the fire —" she started saying, teasing, still speaking through her fingers. Her words ran out when he touched her hand, though, and the playfulness in her smile shifted quickly to puzzled curiosity. She hesitated, then acquiesced, lowering her arm slowly, eyebrows slightly raised. His fingertips lingered on her hand and her own fingertips trailed a line down her lips that kept buzzing even once the contact was gone, like it had been his fingers rather than hers touching her.

"No fire until after," she finished quietly, not particularly caring about the fire at all at this point. Dash was still smiling, her eyes meeting his unabashed.

"Right," Neville agreed, equally as distractedly and eventually drawing his hand back to his side. The fire, of course.. He hadn't intended— Merlin, he had no idea what it was that he had intended— on maintaining their touch for as long as he had by the time that Dash spoke. How long had it been, again? Her voice was soft and quiet and entirely too nice to be fair.

His face flushed again and he eventually steeled his eyes forward despite the fact that he could still feel her own studying his profile. That contact was hot against his skin in an entirely different way to the way that he could still feel on the tips of his fingers like little pricks of electricity.

"Right," Neville was well well aware that he was repeating himself. He couldn't stop the grin again from pulling up at either end of his mouth, knowingly looking anywhere other than next to him. In the few moments that swept by, Neville grappled with wondering just how quickly the air could change between two people. "Merlin..." He exhaled, glancing sideways to Arden, his grin breaking for what felt like the thousandth time.

Just as he opened his mouth to say something, his body shifting with him, there was a loud crack from the oak.

He glanced away, finally. Dash blinked, feeling puzzled and wishing she could read his thoughts. His expression indicated there were things happening under the surface, but she didn’t know him well enough to guess what they might be. Definitely didn’t know him well enough to ask. Ridiculous, she thought again, trying to bring herself back to some kind of professional — or at least appropriate — centre. She looked ahead too, albeit belatedly, the smile not leaving her face. Her lips were still tingling.

He said right, again. “Right,” she said, too, unable to help herself from copying him, teasing just a little. There would be minimal professionalism from her today, apparently. Merlin, he breathed, and now she really needed to know what he was thinking. He was turning to her, sort of, but —

“Neville!” she said in an urgent stage whisper. The sound had been impossible to miss this time, and it sounded again a beat later. “It’s happening isn’t it,” she said. It wasn’t really a question; there was no doubt something was happening in front of them. “Oh god, it is.” The vines were shifting slowly before her eyes, and she could feel a hum on her skin that didn’t feel like brownies at all.

It could only be magic.

“What do we do?” she asked, trying her best to emerge from the relaxed, giggly place they’d been in into something more alert and attentive. She shrugged the blanket (and his arm…) from around her, holding onto the wool in one hand. The smile was harder to shake, though, and she couldn’t stop grinning even now.

Neville's wand was in his hand before he could even process the movement. His eyes widened in unbridled awe as the vines started wrapping around the tree— had Bancroft described it to be so magnificent? The illustrations in the textbooks didn't do it justice either. "It is," He repeated, stunned, eventually looking over at Arden with a smile somehow wider than the one that had been plastered on his face all night.

"C'mon," He stepped into a jog toward the tree. Their time to extract the rare polled was limited, and passing quickly.

______

"Doesn't look like a lot, does it?" Neville held up the small vial against the light from his wand, glancing at Dash who was sitting next to him in the grass. He held the glass delicately between his fingers, just as carefully as he had with the flower itself, still visibly taken by lightly sparkling powder. The sky around them was threatening a purple hue, a familiar sigh of the sun's ascent and the start of a new day.

He wasn't sure how, but an entire night had gone by— just like that.

"Here," Neville handed her the vial to get a closer look then began adjusting the sleeves of his shirt, eyes scanning the dewy ground for his coat that he'd thrown off at some point during the process. He saw it a few feet away but couldn't be bothered to get to his feet just yet. In fact, the thought crossed his mind that he could fall asleep right there, cold and all.

"Thanks, again," He said as the thought came to him.

Fin

“Oh my god,” Dash said, turning to put the blanket on her chair, hesitating, then deciding yes, actually, that was a good idea, and committing to the action. Clearly she was a little scatterbrained. The tingle of magic in the air wasn’t helping; it was the strangest sensation, and it lingered like electricity. Plus, had Neville just looked at her like he was thinking about kissing her? There was a good chance that she’d fabricated that in the last minute or so, but it was distracting whether it was real or not.

“Right,” she said — again — laughing a bit at herself before following him.

———

“Yeah, teeny tiny,” she said, smiling sleepily as she took the vial from him. Even half asleep as she felt, the brunette made sure to take extreme care with the little glass container; it was wildly valuable, and not just monetarily. She sat up a little straighter, squinting as she brought it close to her face. Little light flecks glinted off of the substance inside. Light flecks? She passed the vial back to him, looking up at the sky. It seemed strange that the sun would rise soon, when she felt so, so tired.

“No worries, anytime,” She said, her gaze lingering overhead for a moment before she looked back at him with a gentle smile. Dash yawned into her hand, then rubbed her eyes with the back of a knuckle. “Guess I should head soon” she said, making no move to get up at all.  “And you’re not off the hook for that egg sac mucus harvest,” she teased, succumbing to the feeling of heaviness that had settled over her body and lying back in the grass, eyes facing skyward.


/end