[mp] seeds take hold, ferns unfold { dashville }

25th March 2004
San Diego

"Ach, let go of me, you bloody Yankee goons, I have me a pair of mothers to insult -- "

"An' your mother would mistake a Caterwauler for her own babe, she made such snot-nosed fools like you --"

"Just because it holds water in the stem and screams does NOT a Caterwaulin' Cactus make you absolutely blatherin' buffoon unhand me you great big canary --"

At some point in the brawl, it had become abundantly clear to the security wizards that simply pulling Benedick Bancroft off of Reginald O'Hara was not, in fact, enough to stop the two septuagenarians from trying to kill each other. Currently, each ancient wizard had been tossed over the shoulders of security and was being marched much like toddlers away from the banquet hall and to their rooms in the hotel. Benedick continued screaming for a moment, but then the shape of Reginald O'Hara disappeared around a corner and the sound of the matched Australian insults faded away. Benedick Bancroft, drunk and screamed out, deflated.

"Don't s'ppose you'd put me down now, laddie?"

The guard did not suppose to put him down.

Bancroft hung over the half-giant's shoulder and sulked, robes sticky with beer and his face flushed with blood and alcohol. It wasn't so long he spent like that, just long enough to contemplate the generations of his students what had witnessed it. Well, perhaps he was too old for embarrassment.

In due course he was deposited in front of the suite he was sharing with Neville, the security guard tapping on the door lightly until the lad opened it. "Quit gaping," Bancroft snapped, pushing into the room with a surly glance at the security guard. "You missed quite a party, lad, could have used you an' your fabled sword skills down there." His eyes were bleary, but who was that sitting on the armchair by the window? Bancroft rubbed his eyes. "Ah, Arden. Am I interrupting?"

@Arden Dasher @Neville Longbottom

“About half,” Dash replied with a humble nod, readjusting in her seat so she could pull her legs up onto the chair. Neville sat across from her, on the edge of one of the beds. “I think I understood about half. All of the photosynthesis stuff made sense! You know, there are animals that do that as well?” She trailed off, giving Neville a look that said something like: obviously! She was being serious — there were animals that did that, as well! — but she was teasing, too.

She hadn’t originally intended on going.

The trip to America was a week-long thing; a day here, for the two panels that overlapped herbology and magizoology, then up the coast for a visit to this continent’s biggest aquatic animal research centre, then further north to Canada, and so on. She’d done basically this exact trip with the university a couple of years ago; it didn’t really feel necessary to go again. Now that she was faculty, technically, she’d been able to sign up as another supervisor. Dash hadn’t really been interested in spending time with a group of overexcited eighteen-year-olds.

But then… She’d had a last minute change of heart. 

And of course, when they’d all had spare time this afternoon, she’d just ended up going to a panel with Neville. Had barely understood any of it — half may have been an overestimate. And after that… Well, somehow they’d ended up back here. Bancroft was wherever he was, and Dash’s room had three other people sleeping in it so it had been a natural sort of progression. “Next magizoologist convention you’ll have to come to a panel about reproductive cycles of moonwhales or something. No! — ” she held up a hand to stop any incoming protests. “— I’m not kidding.”

The knock at the door made her jump, and Dash lowered her feet to the floor, leaning forward expectantly as Neville got to his feet.

Ah, there he was.

“'Course not,” Dash replied lightly, smiling as she got to her feet, too. It felt impolite to be the only one sitting down. “Good to see you,” she said. He looked tired. “Would you like a tea or something?” she asked, gesturing with one hand towards the little kettle on a shelf.

Neville grinned. He had settled somewhere halfway between pride and awe as Arden spoke, eventually laughing with her at the mention of the reproductive cycles of moonwhales. "I know," The protest came out mid-laugh. As much as he enjoyed watching someone else learn— Arden, especially, as of late— there was a lingering yearning on a more personal level to do the same. Magizoology was a world unknown.

At least, relative to Herbology.

"S'pose you'll have to come tomorrow then," He nodded, visibly pleased with himself. There was a seminar about the evolution of the Mungus family of Fungi that had sounded particularly interesting as it pertained to its animal healing properties.

"Bancroft," The man's name felt like a question on his tongue and sounded even more like one. Neville instinctively stood up from the bed, straightening out his pants awkwardly like he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't have been. In the process, he caught the last of a rather tall man at the door, the flash of name badge indicating that he was more than just another one of the attendees.

Security? "Er, thanks!" He called out a moment too late. The door had closed.

Neville relaxed a bit. "What've you done?" He turned to Bancroft with a hint of a smile in his eyes despite his furrowed brow.

"Euch, never you mind," Bancroft said, brushing past Neville with nary a stumble. Well, one stumble. He caught himself on Neville's arm –– was his face flushed? He simply must look in the mirror, but not this moment. Arden was in one armchair – it seemed rather too comfortable to flop onto his bed with her here, and his creaky bones gave him the distinct impression that if he even sat at the foot of the duvet, he would simply sink into the down and be unable to emerge again. There was another armchair, though – Bancroft dropped into that one with altogether too much relief. "Reginald continues to be absolutely wrong on bloody everything. Don't ––" he pointed at Neville now, with one knobby, boney finger, " –– if he offers you a job, boy, no is your answer, d'you hear me?" The finger fell. "Bloody fool wouldn't know a cactus if he found one up his arse." He tilted his head, looking at Neville curiously. "Did you pack a sword, lad?"

Arden's presence in the room was more of a surprise to the old man than Bancroft let on. He hadn't been expecting Arden to be loitering in this too small double queen suite. That she was loitering in Neville's general vicinity was less of a shock. He had seen her at these in the past, since the North American magi zoology conference was generally this same week every year. In his younger years he would meander up the coast too, half of curiosity, half of mind to annoy Reginald all the way back to Australia. Of course, Melete wouldn't stand for that this year, nor since ––

Bancroft frowned. There was a reason his wife wanted him home after a week, but bugger him if he could remember what it was.

He shook his head, dislodging the discomfort from his hazy forethoughts. "Tea! Excellent thought, Arden." Should he be calling her Miss Dasher again? It felt too formal for the young woman he had hosted at his dinner table so many times. Perhaps, if he remembered, he would ask in the morning. She got up, he assumed to make some. "No students to chaperone tonight, then?"

“Tea it is,” said the brunette, as she took a few steps over to the little tea making station. It was very American to charge for any little thing in hotels, she thought, trying to remember if she’d been charged for the tea and biscuit she’d had in her room a couple of years ago when she’d last been in the States. Any British person in their right mind would kick off if a hotel charged for tea in Britain.

“Ah, they’re all adults,” She said with an easy wave of her hand, while the water boiled beside her. “There’s not much chaperoning that needs to be done, as long as they’re all ready to leave tomorrow afternoon.” She knew for a fact that more than one of them would be hungover for the morning panel they were all supposed to be attending — she’d seen them drinking in the lobby earlier — but as long as they didn’t make fools of themselves too badly, it didn’t seem like too much of an issue for her.

Dash glanced Neville’s way, then went back to what she was doing. There were four small mugs on the shelf above the kettle; she got three of them down, methodically sorting out the teabags and checking the sugar packets. It had been a while since she’d been with the old man in a space like this; he’d only been lovely to her, even after she and Charles had broken up, but she did sometimes wonder what he thought of her these days. “Milk and one?” she guessed, turning to point at Bancroft. “And you?” she asked, glancing at Neville again.

Neville tried to hide the worry in his face as Bancroft brushed by despite the creases deep in his brow. He stopped just short of reaching out both hands to stop the man from stumbling— he wouldn't take well to that— and played it off by straightening out his jumper. "Reginald, again?" There was a flicker of a smile on his face as he spun around near the bed, suddenly uncomfortable with just how comfortable he'd been there when Bancarf came barrelling in.

He hadn't interrupted, so why did it feel like he had?

At the mention of a sword, his face felt hot all over again and he succumbed to sitting on the end of the bed, markedly less relaxed than moments prior even when the attention shifted back to Arden who hadn't seemed to notice his internal panic. "Oh," It took a moment for him to register the question after she had turned to look at him. "Bit of milk, thanks," Instinctually he got to his feet to help, handing Bancroft's mug carefully over but pausing before taking his own.

"I'm sure they're looking forward to the rest of the trip, yeah?" Neville dipped his head as another silent thank you before making his way back to where he had been sitting. The hotel room suddenly felt a few sizes too small.

"Reginald, again," Bancroft declared, squirming a little as he tried to get comfortable in the hotel upholstery. It was frigid in here -- when had all the hotels decided there had to be cooling charms in every room? He muttered a warming charm, cast it with a lazy flap of his hand, so the chair warmed slow and easy on his old bones. "Old fool is lucky there isn't a Herbology institution worth its salt in the southern hemisphere, otherwise he'd have been laughed out the field near a century ago." Well, half a century, Reginald was of an age with Bancroft himself. They had been friends, once. Still were, when they weren't drunk and at each others throats over the most trivial of species differentiation.

"Young adults, fresh from seven years of boarding school," Bancroft said, falling into easy teasing with Arden once again. Charles was a bloody fool, he was. "You cannae trust 'em as far as they can hurl their own drink. But, if you think they'll be right, then." It wasn't really the end of a sentence, but Bancroft ended the phrase with a spread of his hands and a downward tone, so that was the end of the thought.

The kettle whistled, noisy, cheerful in the suite. "Right you are," he confirmed for the young woman, pleased that she remembered and failing to hide that. "Thank you kindly." Neville seemed less quick on the draw, his face gone red as the young man passed Bancroft a mug. Ah, Benedick realised all too late. He was interrupting. He was of half a mind to get up and go for a midnight walk, blast what Melete had to say, and allow the two of them their privacy.

But the mug was warm, and the armchair was warm, and Arden and Neville both had such soft voices. He sipped at his tea, letting his eyes fall closed a moment as the conversation continued.