Lindon opens his eyes, staring up at the ceiling. It's a wooden one, with simple boards covering its surface, and at one of its corners is a fairly large spider: it moves in slow, graceful movements, drawing its web from one corner to the other and creating a neat, thick web for itself. Without moving his body, Lindon shifts his arm, elbowing Cecilia in the side.
"Mmm?" She lies on her belly beside him, face pressed into three messily stacked pillows, and he glances at her, arching one of his eyebrows, before pointing at the spider.
"Is that venomous?" Celia leans back slightly, peering up at it for a few moments with tired, bleary eyes.
"Yeah," she decides. The spider is a sickly yellow, banded with red and black, and its eyes are mildly luminescent. "Don't touch it."
"I'll endeavour not to," Lindon replies, and she drops her face into the pillows again. The skin of her naked back glistens slightly in the bright, warm sun streaming in through the fabric of the blinds: Lindon himself is equally sweaty, and although Celia had dropped to sleep with her typical one-second ease, it had taken him hours before he could settle himself under the stifling heat. The sheets are primarily falling off one part of the bed, their remaining third tangled between Celia's thighs, and Lindon sits up.
He delivers a stern poke to Celia's right arsecheek, and she groans. "What?"
"We're getting up now," Lindon says mildly, leaning over her and delivering a kiss to the space between her shoulder blades.
"Who's this we?" Celia grumbles, but she pushes herself up nonetheless, sitting herself down and looking at him. "What time is it?"
"Nineish," he says, and she groans, reaching up and rubbing at her right eye with the heel of her hand. It's astonishingly endearing, and he smiles fondly at her. "Come now. The day is young."
"Too young," she mutters. "I prefer them older."
"Are we talking about women or days?" She reaches out, pinching his nipple, and he hisses out a noise, slapping her hand away. Celia laughs, and he flicks one of her breasts, sticking his tongue out at her. It's all the invitation she needs to tussle: she throws himself at him, and within seconds he's pinned on his back, his arms twisted uncomfortably against the mattress and her knee weighting heavily on his thigh. "This is unfair."
"You're too thin," she says, perhaps for the third time that week, and he groans, trying to pull himself out of her grip. It's not a successful endeavour. She's taught him numerous defensive techniques, but he's never been especially able to put them to work - Lindon Sartorius just isn't a man suited to physical confrontation.
"And I can't wrestle, and my duelling is pitiful," he agrees. "Thankfully, I've a keen mind."
"Have you?" Celia asks, tilting her head to the side and releasing her iron grasp on his arms. "You've been keeping that under your hat." She laughs at her own joke, and he shakes his head, dragging himself out from under her and pushing open the bathroom a door.
"Is it meant to be this hot?" he complains, turning the cold tap on their bath.
"In Egypt, in June?" she says. "Yes, I think so." He lets out an irritated groan, leaning on the doorframe and watching her as the bath fills up. "You need to shave. I'm not sharing the bath with you if you're going to shave." Lindon looks down. Light, black hair is beginning to grow over the lower part of his belly and above his cock, and she's right, he does need to shave.
"I'm not going to shave this in the bath with you," Lindon says. "I'm not an animal."
"You could be," Celia says suddenly, and he rolls his eyes, walking into the bathroom again. "Don't walk away!"
"I'm not listening to this again," Lindon retorts, pouring a little bubble bath into the water. It's a large tub, ideal for the two of them, and he's glad they're staying in wizarding accommodation - the spiders might be a little more dangerous than usual, but at the very least they've a properly working set of plumbing. He feels Celia approach, and she stands on her tip toes, doing her best to put her chin against his shoulder and not exactly succeeding.
"Why not?"
"The process to become an Animagus is incredibly complex and fraught with potential dangers-"
"We're capable people! We're not idiots!" Celia argues, turning the tap off as the bath fills to an acceptable level. "We'd be fine!"
"It's positively laborious," he says, joining her. They lie facing each other, leaning back against the sides of the bath - they can comfortably sit with their legs against each other, and he lets out a quiet sigh, tipping his head back and closing his eyes for a few moments. Celia embraces the silence for a little too, but then Lindon hears the quiet flapping of wings, and he opens one eye.
The owl drops the paper into Celia's hand, and Lindon groans.
"No idea why you continue your subscription to that rag."
"It's not as if I'm going to take up the Quibbler, Lindon," Celia retorts, and she glances at the page, thoughtful. "Lockhart's been sentenced. Twenty five years in Azkaban." Lindon grins: the idea of Lockhart's ridiculous self in an Azkaban cell is a pleasing one, particularly with his crimes in mind.
"Very good. Is that all it says in the article?"
"Just a list of his crimes, and a few people talking about it either side..." Cecilia trails off, tapping her lip with her thumb. "Chad Arnett, do we know him?" Lindon scans his mind, trying to recall the name.
"I think he was in my Muggle Studies class at Hogwarts," he says thoughtfully. "Yes, that's it. I fucked him in my seventh year - had him over a desk in an empty classroom with Filch right outside." Celia makes a face.
"Thanks for sharing that."
"You asked if we knew him," Lindon says, shrugging. "Why, is he in there?"
"Said Lockhart didn't deserve an Azkaban sentence. He's president of the Gilderoy Lockhart Fanclub, apparently." Lindon frowns.
"Well, that's soured the memory of that sexual encounter." Celia snorts, dropping the paper to the side, and she lowers herself into the bath until the water comes up to her chin.
"Serves you right," she says, and he sighs, shaking his head.
"I bet you a Galleon he'll kick up some fuss or other before the year's out. I remember finding him a bit scary, in terms of his obsessions."
"What house was he in?"
"Hufflepuff, I think," Lindon says, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Maybe Gryffindor, but I think he was Hufflepuff. He certainly wasn't one of ours, and he was too dim to be a Ravenclaw. We meeting Weasley today?"
"That's right," Celia says, giving a small nod of her head. "His family's coming out today, though, so he's only helping us this morning."
"The whole family? Goodness. Wherever will he put them all?"
"Don't be nasty."
"I'll try," he promises, and she grins at him. "I'll cheer up when I see his pretty face again, I'm sure."
"Too young," Celia chides, and Lindon laughs a little, reaching for the shampoo on the shelf to the side of the bath and gesturing for her to come closer. "You'd better be joking."
"Of course I am," he murmurs. "I'd never deign to shag a cursebreaker." She scoffs, leaning back against him and letting him shampoo her hair.
"More like none of them would deign to shag you." They settle into the usual banter, animatedly biting back and forth, and he relaxes into it: he does love little moments like these. They're rather the best thing about having Celia around.