TWENTYONE
But Eve did do it again. And for a third time, and then a fourth. The spell, the one in which she obsessed over for weeks on end, that kept her thoughts awake at night, and her anxiety on demand, had somehow, there in that mystery room, found second nature in her. It was like a flip had switched in her brain after that first success, and something keenly powerful and transgressive had poured its way into her.
"I'd like to think your lamb and my wolf are friends," Fernando said, watching Eve's white lamb dance around the circle, moving only in directions when Fernando's wolf saunter over to the middle of its ring.
"I don't know. It looks a bit hungry, doesn't it?" Eve asked, watching the wolf tilt its nose up slightly as if sniffing the air for possible dinner prospects. Eve's lamb faded away before any further commentary could be made, though.
The meeting time had been spent just like this, taking turns between practicing and watching others do so. Eve was feeling tired but blissfully happy, more so than she had in what felt like weeks. Fernando's wolf disappeared right at the castle bell chimed to indicate a quarter until 9. Others didn't seem at all concerned by the time, though, as if many had not heard the sound at all, too busy in their own performances of successes and failures. It wasn't until Harry walked between the blue light and hovering Patronus', making his way to a center view of the room, that many of the students broke from their trance of enchantment and spells.
"I know this is the last meeting of the term, but it is getting late, and I would like to end it now on such a solid note," Harry's words were met with a crowd of groans, as everyone's lack of previous attention seemingly confirmed that no one was looking to end the session anytime soon.
"Phenomenal work, everyone, really. I'm so proud of all of you," Harry continued with an ardent smile, the look causing many others in the circle to mirror back.
And with a few more exchanged sentiments, the group was broken, and there was a collective murmur of Happy Christmas's as everyone joined together to say their personal departing remarks.
But before Eve could even take a few more steps closer to the crowd, Neville's tall figure was over her.
"Oh, Neville. Happy Christmas," Eve grinned, raising her arms and connecting their shoulders together in a hug, the contact at first taking the boy by surprise, but he returned it quickly. When they pulled apart, a widespread smile was on his face.
"Happy Christmas, Eve. You did so brilliantly today. And a lamb, it makes so much sense when you think about it," Neville started, his smile settling into a shy, slight grin as the two of them stood with their arms still outreached to one another.
"Oi, enough of the sweet talk, Longbottom. Get to the back of the line."
George appeared from behind Neville's shoulders, an expectant and a bit cocky look on his face at the two of them. Eve rolled her eyes, watching Neville turn to George and send him a raised but otherwise unfazed glance.
"Oh, shove it, George," Neville muttered, his smile still on his face, before waltzing off to another group of students in the room.
"He's grown quite the mouth on him," George said, turning back to Eve, still the same confident look on his face. Eve realized now that George must have decided to pretend that she hadn't avoided him all week.
"As he should," Eve said plainly, her arms raising as she folded them in front of her. George smiled at this as if pleased by her cold attitude.
"A little lamb, huh? That's very sweet," George said, his face inching towards hers as if he had told a secret. Eve raised a brow.
"A little lamb for a little bird, aye?" Eve replied, a tiny grin forming on her mouth at the thought of George's own Patronus form. He didn't seem at all offended by the comment, though.
"Hermione called it a magpie. It's meant to be deeply intelligent and vastly charming," George said.
"I don't see how a bird could be charming," Eve countered, but she had a feeling George already had an answer for her.
"If it's a form of myself, how could it not be?" George asked as if his words were the only possible resolution for her hypothetical observation.
"Ah, and there's that deep intelligence you were just mentioning," Eve murmured, rolling her eyes and taking a glance around the room in casual aloofness, although truthfully, she just found it difficult to match his stare.
Several lingering students were still around, but many were already starting to slip out the room. She glanced at Fernando, who stood by the doorway with Hannah and the rest of the Hufflepuffs. He caught her eye and gave a sort of wiggle of his eyebrows. Eve sighed and looked away.
"You want to walk back together?"
George's eyes were still on her as she turned back to him. His expression was a bit more softened now as if he had grown tired of the playful act.
"Yeah, sure," Eve shrugged, and the two headed for the door, Fernando having already disappeared from it the moment she had looked away.
There was the sound of a crack from behind them, and the pair turned to watch a bright but otherwise tiny rocket of sparks zoom past their heads and hit the wall in front of them. As if on instinct, both George and Eve centered their eyes in the same direction, where they saw Fred and his group of Gryffindors crowding around in amusement.
"Bollocks, sorry about that! Was meant to go in the other direction!" Fred called towards them; his guilty look adorned with the cheekiest of smiles. His house members laughed in unison around him.
"I'm going to assume that was done on purpose," Eve remarked with a sigh. She turned back towards the door and reached to grasp the brass knob.
"As you should," George replied back with his own sigh, but Eve caught a glimpse of the same cheeky smile when they finally slipped out the room.
They were alone in the corridor when the door behind them disappeared back into a stone wall. Although the solitude was expected, Eve couldn't help but instantly feel far closer with George than she had anticipated. They walked without words for a few long moments, as if both of them were getting accustomed to the intimacy they so rarely got with one another. Then, when they reached the corner of another long corridor, their footsteps were interrupted by the sound of loud, approaching ones coming from the opposite side of the passage.
George sprung into action before Eve could even manage to stop in her tracks, the boy grabbing her arm and yanking her back into the corridor they had just come from.
"You can hide all ya want, but I already heard ya!"
Filch's voice rang through the now opposing corridor, but the two knew they only had a few more seconds before he would make it to the corner they stood behind. Eve turned to George in the darkness of the hall, and she could see he was already fishing in his pockets. Panic spread throughout her body, but she couldn't manage to move an inch, even as the footsteps grew louder as each moment passed. Fortunately, her paralyzing anxiety was not matched with her company, and Eve watched George peak his head into the corridor, his hand gripped on something she couldn't see in the dim light. But Eve was able to catch the motion of his hand as George threw the object into the corridor, and in an instant, there was the sound of a crack and a rush of air, and she recognized the sparks that she had just seen only a few minutes prior in the Room of Requirement. The roar of Filch's cry filled the air just as quickly.
"This is the part where you are meant to run," George murmured, turning back to Eve and grabbing her hand. The contact sprung her into motion, and her legs moved with his, the pair running down the opposite corridor and away from the chaos now ensuing behind them.
"But the stairs," Eve managed to breathe out as they ducked behind another corridor. She realized now that they were traveling away from the direction back to their dormitories, although the risk of traveling by the shifting stairwells seemed far too high at the very moment.
"It's fine. I know another way," George replied, a bit breathless from his own escape. With his hand still in hers, he pulled her down the corridor once again, and Eve let him, realizing now that if she were to be in this situation with anyone, it would be with him. Partly because eluding from trouble was a full-time sport for the boy, partly because she liked the feeling of his hand intertwined with her own.
The silence remained necessary between them as George guided her through several mixed-matched corridors and stairwells. But, with passing classrooms and paintings, Eve began to recognize they had made their way to the right side of the castle. Their pace began to slow, as their urgency began to loosen, as somehow, their hands fell to their sides again. They strolled now through the corridors, as if they were heading to class, and their hands had never touched at all.
Soon, they approached another passage, but this time, the side of the corridor was adorned with a row of massive windows that overlooked a dimly lit portion of the castle. There was frost growing on the sides of the windows, and Eve could feel a slight temperature drop compared to their previous start in the castle's inner chambers.
"It'll probably snow again tonight, don't you think?" Eve asked finally, although she knew she didn't quite need the answer. Perhaps, she just figured it was safe enough to talk again.
"I think it's already snowing," George replied, slowing in his pace until he stopped in the middle of the corridor, in front of one of the giant icy windows. Eve found his side, and the two peered through. She realized George had been right. Tiny pillows of snow were already falling past the window, and looking as far down below as possible, even in the darkness, Eve could make out the stark white sheen already on the castle grounds.
"Can I ask you something?" George said after a minute or two of silence and snowfall.
"Yeah," Eve replied, and although she could feel George's eyes on her, hers were still on the window.
"What did you think about when you performed your Patronus?"
George's question was one she hadn't expected, but she welcomed it all the same.
"I have this memory, from years ago, before Hogwarts. My mom and dad took me to Spain to visit my grandparents," Eve began, and already a slight smile spread across her face at the memory, "I distinctly recall this afternoon we spent at the beach, with no one else there but my family and I. And the weather was so beautiful that day, and my mother was the first one in the ocean, and she was calling after me. I can still hear her voice so distinctly."
Eve turned to George, and she was met with his curious, mindful eyes. It was the face she only got to see on the most intimate occasions with him, reserved for only the most peculiar moments when no joke was needed to be made. She grinned and turned to the snow again.
"For some reason, it was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of happiness. When everything felt easier, I guess," Eve continued, giving a slight shrug of her shoulders as if to ease the sadness that her words revealed more than she had liked.
"Things could still feel that way," George started, but when Eve turned to him again and met his eyes, she couldn't quite read what he meant.
"Yeah, some things, I suppose," Eve replied, watching as George's hazel eyes darkened in the dim sheen of the window's moonlight. He seemed serious now, and it made Eve nervous.
"Some things," George repeated as if mulling her own words in his mouth, trying to decipher what they could possibly mean for her, or perhaps, for him.
Eve sighed as if feeling at once the tire and discomfort of the night, and she brushed her fingers through her messy dark curls. But as her hand went to leave again from her face, it was caught before the fall.
George's hand was in hers again, for the second instance of the night, but he made no inclination to move her this time. Instead, he stood there wordlessly and twiddled his thumb with hers. His movements then switching to turn her palm away and reveal her knuckles, and, even in the faint darkness, the light mark of her handwriting and Umbridge's words. His thumb traced the scar for a moment, and in time, Eve felt as though there were no better heal in the world necessary for the pain.
"I've never seen this before," George said suddenly, and Eve could see, from where his fingers traveled to down her fingers, that he was referring to the ring Lucie had given her that very morning.
"It was a Christmas gift. It's meant to reveal your mood," Eve said, a shy, and a bit sheepish, grin forming on her lips at the thought of the clever and slightly immature, magical contraption she had forgotten had now adorned her finger.
Eve studied the ring; the stone having turned into a bright pink shade at some undistinguished time of the night. The pink moved in the reflection of the moonlight, and Eve could see the waves of deep red through the pink as if moving with each new heartbeat within her.
"What does it mean?" George asked lightly, his thumb still lingering between the folds of her fingers.
"I don't know. I've never seen it this color before," Eve said, a weak laugh escaping her lips at the truth in her answer. She thought how much easier everything would be to understand if she had just been given an instruction manual.
"Eve."
There was something stern and faintly urgent about George's otherwise quiet tone, and when Eve looked up to him, she could see his eyes mirrored this exact expression. It was as if he was both desperate and confused by his emotions and desires, and Eve could feel the grip on her hand tighten.
And as if urgency finally took hold on him, George's lips were on hers. There was a slight gasp that escaped Eve's lips for a moment at the surprise of the act, but her parting mouth only made more room for his, and soon their air was shared in a sweet and frantic exchange of each other's pure intentions.
Eve's hand left George's, only to meet her other hand to cup his cheeks, and with this motion, George used the freedom of his hands to find her hips.
Their kisses, although breathless and eager at first, began to slow in pace, as if finally finding the comfort in one another's embrace. George's kisses turned tender and slow, and soon they traveled away from her lips and onto her cheeks, laying soft pecks around the skin she knew had to be far more flushed than it ever had been before. His mouth began soon to trail down to her jaw and neck, where he took patient time to plant kisses from her ear to her collarbone. With this journey, Eve found her hand in his red hair, as if guiding him through every touch on the way, or perhaps to find support for the weakness she now felt in her legs. Between deep kisses and soft bites, his lips moved up again, only to plant another kiss on the space just below her ear.
"I thought that would never happen," George whispered, his words accompanying a slight breathless laugh that tickled the nape of her neck.
"Did you plan that?" Eve asked, a faint giggle escaping her lips as if her mind had finally caught up to her body.
"No, I only hoped for it," George replied, pulling his face finally away from Eve's and meeting her eyes with a sheepish grin. And although George usually took a natural disposition for appearing guilty, Eve knew he meant his words.
And as they stood apart again, the unforeseen shock of the situation began to leave and become replaced by their usual teenage timid reserve. Eve thought to herself how the typical freezing castle corridors felt unbearably hot for the first time all night.
"We probably shouldn't chance staying out any later," Eve said, after what had felt like the most prolonged minute of unmanaged eye contact and growing sweaty palms.
George nodded, and the two set out again down the corridor, falling into the same quiet shuffling of feet as if the last few minutes had never even occurred at all. But Eve could tell something had changed, if not only in the way their hands would brush ever so slightly as they turned another corner, or in the smiles they would steal in one another's direction when the other's face glanced away. In the midst of this silent game, Eve hardly noticed they had passed the portrait of the fruit bowl.
"Can I see you before the train leaves tomorrow morning?" George asked suddenly, as if he too had just realized they had made it to the entrance of the Hufflepuff common room.
"Yeah, okay," Eve nodded.
"Wicked," George said, nodding to himself at his words and glancing between Eve and the barrels beside her. Eve realized now this must be one of the odd occurrences where she got to see George Weasley nervous.
"After breakfast, outside the Great Hall?" George asked, and again Eve nodded.
"Wicked," Eve replied, the miming earning a wide grin from George, although no reply from him came. Eve could feel the prospect of another staredown in the works, and a sigh fell from her lips as she glanced away to the corridor behind him.
"Well, goodnight, George," Eve said, a small smile emerging from her lips although she was well aware of the shyness she felt now in front of him.
"Goodnight, Eve," George said, and for a moment, his eyes stayed on hers, as if searching for a more genuine sense of a goodbye for the night, but he didn't make a move to answer his urges this time around. George again nodded, and with a quick brush of their hands as he turned past her, he really did make his goodbye.
Eve watched the back of his silhouette until the very last moment it disappeared from view and into the dark.
Author's Note: Oh man, 21 chapters later, this really was a long time coming lol.
