The couple lays curled up together in front of a roaring fireplace on a plush bear skin rug, drinking their warm spiced apple ciders, enjoying one of the most hallowed nights in their world. This Halloween is not like any other night, seeing the couple has been together for in excess of eighteen months and some days with no firm commitment needed on either part. She leans over and whispers seductively in his ear from memory:
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."
"The Raven? Really? Can you be anymore cliché? You know I prefer Macbeth. A little 'Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble'. It is the potioneer in me, darling." She swats his chest in jest as he nips at the nape of her neck with his dark tender lips, his arms wrapping themselves tighter around her waist holding her still as he gently tickles her sensitive stomach.
It is their annual celebration of the holiday: warm cider, a roaring fire, and some Edgar Allan Poe with just each other as they locked the rest of the world away if only for the evening. They would reminisce over the years at school late into the night, Blaise telling stories of his Halloween feast at Hogwarts where a troll meandered into the castle. Luna would discuss some of the antiquated traditions of various secluded druids hold for the day. It was romantic for them, it was their way of being intimate on an intellectual level.
A war heroine and an anti-hero. An unlikely duo, but one that seemed to work for them in all their personal disfunction. There was a slight pitter patter that could be heard in the darkness that lay beyond their walls. It wasn't children; Merlin knows that this couple would only corrupt children in their own bizarre way. It wasn't rain; the night sky was the perfect blend of clouds with enough stars that danced around the full moon. It was their own pitter patters.
It had been three years post Hogwarts; three years of supposed wizarding adulthood that found Blaise Zabini and Luna Lovegood in the National Zoo in Washington DC, United States looking over the same pen that held a pair of black and white lazy fluff balls laying on rocks and eating leaves.
"Pandas. Do they do anything interesting? Spit fire? Heck I'll take a good growl. Honestly, I have seen house cats that are more interesting," Blaise quipped to himself head cocked to the side leaning on the railing as he watched the supposed bears enjoying a sun filled morning, unknowing the blonde was standing mere feet away from him.
"No. From everything I have read, they even need help having intercourse," her voice was airy, like a mythological nymph sighing.
Blaise had nearly jumped at the sound, pushing off from the railing that separated him from the barely moving wild creatures in front of him. He didn't know the woman, the witch as he later was reminded, was standing there. He didn't know that the woman, the witch, remembered him from their schooling, which for both seemed to be a lifetime ago. Her forthrightness and fearlessness in discussing something as inappropriate as the mating patterns of wild animals didn't faze her; he on the other hand was taken aback, this was not discussed in his proper pureblood circles.
They both had been traveling; he was finding himself after the morally questionable raising he had, and she was trying to find one of the many illusive magical creatures that she fully believed in. The war had changed them both, neither in a good way. Although she embraced every morsel of life with every ounce of her being, there were many fewer ounces to the wisp of a witch. He had seen things no one of his young life should have experienced, including knowing what the frail blonde next to him endured at the hands of his former friends and colleagues.
Over the course of the next few days they travelled zoos together starting with the National Zoo, the onto one in New York, and finally resting on the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in California; exploring new creatures to them although commonplace in the Muggle world. They talked to the gamekeepers - or as they are referred to in the Muggle world "trainers", though many did not actually train the animals and only cared for them. They talked to an animal healer, or vet, about a cheetah that was recently rescued from poachers in Africa that wanted him for his fur. Another day they talked for hours about the mighty Asian elephant and later the African black horned rhinoceros, and come evening over drinks, they compared what they learned to the knowledge the two had on the erumpent, which honestly wasn't much.
They enjoyed tea overlooking a replica savannah, an afternoon meal meeting sea lions which did not look like a lion at all rather a brownish flubbering mass of skin, and a dinner further examining the black and white non-sexual bear that really is not a bear. One thing the couple, now an actual couple, could agree upon: Muggles are weird. Blaise thought back to the muggle borns he knew, not many. Luna talked incessantly about her friendship with Hermione Granger and how she could assist the two of them in understanding Muggle creatures. Blaise just scoffed at the idea internally, while allowing this witch free reign.
And that lead the couple to the couch of the Gryffindor Know It All, inquiring as to why the Muggles felt the overwhelming need to help black and white lazy fluff balls have sex. To explain the situation as awkward for the lone wizard in attendance would be seriously understating the facts at hand.
Over their months together they grew closer, and with each passing month the dark-skinned wizard would buy his witch a small stuffed muggle creature to remember their travels. He wasn't the sentimental type by any of his friends' accounts, rather he portrayed himself as a shallow playboy type. His witch, this airy wisp of a woman, brought out a gentleness to him and he reserved it just for her. These stuffed animals, starting with the giant panda that sat in the corner of their living room, were purposely strewn around their house in an organized chaotic pattern. The poor giraffe that sat above their stove was the worse for wear, he knew he would have to contact that zoo in California soon to replace it.
Each stuffed creature has its own name and history, not the history of where the couple acquired it but rather the animal's story. Luna even made a scrapbook for their animals chronicling their biography which they would read together regularly, but especially when a new addition came into their little herd.
This Halloween, the couple lay together as the wizard gets antsy for what lay ahead. Do they move on as a couple? Would this month's gift be understood? Well, yes it would be understood, Luna Lovegood was a Ravenclaw and quite intuitive in her own way. He was going away from the stuffed creatures, he was making a commitment to her, only their second in their relationship. The first wasn't even a request on his part; she just seemed to move in with him after a trip to Australia. She even moved into his bed. Just like it was what they were meant to do. And looking back, they were. He had not felt the same amount of calmness and security as he did when his witch was lying next to him.
Now he actually had prepared for this one. Hopefully she wouldn't blow it for him, for them. It wasn't a great promise of forever - they both knew how unsure forever was. This wouldn't be a grand proposal of marriage; his mother and her numerous husbands had decidedly turned him off to the idea of marriage. And children, he could only scoff at the idea of having children in general. This would be more - well - them. A defining moment. A something special.
So, after their mugs of hot spiced cider were downed, after the fire became a mere glow behind the grate, after The Raven was read, and even after he was granted a roll of his favorite scenes of Macbeth, the time had come. There was no more delaying the question that plagued his mind this whole evening. The clock was quickly approaching midnight when he finally found the inner strength to do what he had proposed to do this very night.
He excused himself to the other room, returning with a small wrapped box. He handed the gift to his witch drawing in a deep breath before he got down on one knee as he asked, with the most sincerity filling his dark eyes, "Would you do me the great honor of raising a puppy together?"
Author's Notes:
Title and quote from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Quote from Macbeth: IV.i 10-11 by William Shakespeare.
House: Slytherin
Year: 5
Short
Prompt: (Speech) "Would you do me the great honor of raising a puppy together?"
Word Count: 1523