Last time:

He got the surprise of his life when she slipped her arm out from his where their elbows had been locked, entwined her fingers with his, brought the back of his hand to her pink lips, kissed the knuckle of his left index finger and whispered,

"Good Luck!"

He was looking at her strangely still, but she paid the look no mind, hiked up her full skirt with her left hand to reveal bare feet, glanced briefly at him, and began to run.

Despite the fact that the girl had in no uncertain terms an athletic build, Draco soon found himself trailing behind the peculiarly striking girl. She was short in stature, perhaps five foot and one inch, at most and healthily curvy. The pale beauty's feet were pounding the dry earth in the same rhythm as the blonde Adonis'. Coming out of his stupor, Draco began to run, not because he had to, not for practice, but for the sheer joy of running. He soon caught up to her, and just as her was beginning to feel the same bliss he was certain was contained within her stormy gray eyes, Roanoke stopped. She stared up at the sky for long moments before Draco got the nerve to ask what she was doing.

"Roan-" she stopped him with a light touch on the arm before he could speak her entire name.

"Rain," she said simply, suddenly getting a feeling of deja vu, he began to get flustered and started to formulate a question when she finished, "It's coming."

"What!" Confusion was written all over the pale boy's face.

"I can smell it," she stated the fact, "It's coming."

"What's co-" he commenced, but suddenly terminated speech when he felt the first droplet on the knuckle of his index finger on the hand still clutched by hers.

"Rain," they spoke together, and he squeaked when she let go of his hand, eager for her touch, so warm. Instead of grasping his hand again, she pulled on the pinkie of his left hand until he held it out and then put her own around it as though they were making a pinkie swear as small children do. She looked up almost an entire foot into the face of Draco Malfoy, (who was between 5'11 and 6 feet) with such a tenderness he had never before seen, and Roanoke began to chant,

"Good luck, good will, good fortune, not ill," and repeated it slowly, for his sake, and kept going until he got it. There they were, standing in the middle of a garden, chanting a simple but in some way profound verse, over and over. The mantra became faster and faster, louder and louder, until the two were screaming the rhyme at the top of their lungs, as fast as their tongues would move, drenched by the downpour.

Suddenly, the pale girl sat, in the mud, her sopping skirts settled around her in the neatest fan she could manage with the far past damp material. Once she had placed her skirts and was sitting, her legs criss-crossed (Indian Style they called it in her Kindergarten class, or criss-cross applesauce) in the mud, Roanoke looked up at Draco expectantly. When he raised an eyebrow, she raised her hand to him as he had done earlier, inviting her to come with him, she was now bidding him to do the same, come with her, whatever that might entail. When he neither refused nor took the hand, she patted a relatively dry spot near her, beneath a large oak. Peering up at him through the rain, she beckoned him with her pointer finger and nodded her head toward the partially dry spot where her hand still resided.

Wondering what the hell he was doing, wrecking such expensive clothes by sitting in the mud with some girl he didn't even know, he slowly complied. After a moment of complete silence, the plump girl asked Draco what time it was. He was about to draw his wand and do a time-telling spell, when she said this:

"Never mind, Ace, I've got a watch," she stared at her wrist for a moment before seeming to remember that she would have to look through the plethora of bracelets on her left hand, she began to paw among them, in search of what she had called a watch. Draco watched with not quite heart-felt sneer at the thought that Roanoke may own muggle devices. Leaning into the blonde on her left, she held up her watch and said gleefully, "It's almost my birthday!"

"Really?" He asked rhetorically.

"Nope," she replied with enough sarcasm to drown a fish, "I lied." She finished with a smile as she looked up at his darkened form.

"It's almost midnight, and I turn 16 tomorrow!" Roanoke whispered, as though it was a secret, all sarcasm forgotten. Looking down at her watch, the girl who was still soaked to the skin began the count down "17... 16... 15... 14... 13..." Draco joined her in murmuring the numbers counting down to the next day at the number eleven, "10... 9... 8..." the two voices joined, barely audible beneath the wind and storm raging around them, "7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2...1..." the number zero was drowned out by howls of pain, both Roanoke and Draco clutched at themselves in pain, Roanoke the base of where he thumb and palm met on her left hand, and Draco his right ankle.

Hey... I know this is the first time I've written anything down here... I'm a first-timer with this stuff okay!
Ummm... I know each chapter is horrifyingly short, but I will update quickly! I Promise!
Uh... yea... moving on, please review, this is my FIRST EVER story and I love Roanoke to death! (Yay MY character!) She is based on my bestest friend, ;D, and um... yup... review... it's really bad, but I'll get over it!

Talk to you later! Thanks for reading thus far! I love you all! REVIEW!

dARWIN ;D (YES, I'm a girl... it's a nickname... get over yourself!)
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PEACE AND LOVE!