Title:Beginnings
Author: mindfunk
Rating: G/PG
Summary:A stuffed monkey is a nice surprise ... right?
Disclaimer: Everything Harry Potter related belongs to JK Rowling and those to whom she's licensed them. I don't own anything, and I'm not making any money off nicking HP people, places or things and writing a story about them.
Notes:Birthday fic written for Emcue, aka Curio. The woman loves monkeys (she is the Monkey Queen, after all) and rarepairs, so I tried to combine the two.
This was ridiculous. It was stupid. He never should have bought the sodding thing in the first place, and he had no idea what had possessed him to do it. He'd just been passing the shop, and it had been in the window, and it made him think of her and that day they'd spent together at the Muggle zoo in London last weekend, so he'd bought it on impulse. They hadn't even been dating long, so why on earth was he turning up on her doorstep with gifts when she wasn't expecting to see him at all that day?
His body was apparently not listening to his brain at all today, because despite thinking of what a bad idea this was, his feet continued carrying him up the front walk to her front door.
"Don't do it!" his brain said.
Ignoring the warning, his hand rose and knocked on the door.
"Run before she answers!" his brain said, but his feet stubbornly refused to obey.
Suddenly, there she was in front of him on the doorstep. To his eyes, she looked beautiful, her wild hair and clean scrubbed face having a natural, effortless appeal to him that all the powdered pureblood princesses lacked.
"Hello!" she said, smiling up at him. "I wasn't expecting you today."
"Um, I can go," he said awkwardly, shuffling his feet. "I don't mean to bother you. I just wanted to give you this." With that, he thrust the realistic looking stuffed monkey into her hands and turned to go.
"Wait!" Hermione said, laying her hand on his arm. "This looks just like one of the Black Howler Monkeys we saw in the exhibit at the zoo! They're such a fascinating species, what with their highly evolved social structure and their vegetarian nature ..."
He loved it when she talked like a book. Hell, he loved it when she talked, period.
"... although it's such a shame that they're endangered. Someday they'll only exist in the zoos," she finished. "Where ever did you find it?" she beamed up at him, her hand still on his arm.
"I saw it in the window of a toy shop that features a whole line of plush versions of endangered animals. It made me think of you," he said shyly. Oh! Did he just say a monkey reminded him of her? Anxiously he looked to her for a reaction.
Hermione was still smiling.
"You saw it and it reminded you of that day at the zoo too?" she said. He nodded hurriedly, thankful she understood what he meant. She always seemed to understand him.
"What a lovely thing for you to do," she said, her hand sliding down his arm and placing itself in his.
"I know we didn't have plans tonight, but would you like to go get some dinner?" he asked, slightly breathless at the fact that she had taken his hand.
"I'd love to," she answered. "Maybe you can help me think of a name for my new friend while we eat."
As he stood in her doorway and waited for Hermione to get her coat, Gregory Goyle thought to himself that maybe buying his almost-girlfriend a stuffed monkey wasn't such a stupid thing to do after all.