For OQ Prompt Party - Day 4
Prompt 138: Hogwarts AU where Robin is the Gryffindor guy who falls for the Slytherin girl Regina.
I took some liberties and reinterpreted this one a little bit, hope you guys like it anyway.
"Locksley!"
The angry bite of her voice reaches him even before she barges into his office, her face scrunched up adorably as she stares daggers at him.
"Yes, m'lady?" he greets.
She answers by throwing this morning's edition of The Daily Prophet onto his desk.
"What on Earth were you thinking?!" she barks, and Robin looks down at the headline she's so angrily raising an eyebrow to.
MYSTERIOUS MUGGLE CLEANING ARTIFACT SEEN FLYING OVER SURREY
"Oh?" he muses, reading further and studiously ignoring her seething.
Non-magical citizens of Surrey received quite the shock last night, when one of their own Muggle inventions was seen flying over the muggy streets of three different neighborhoods. The Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, Emma Swan, has explained that the device, known as a "vacuum cleaner," is not supposed to fly or create fireworks, which explains the befuddled expression on Mr. David Charming, one of the fifteen Muggles who witnessed the incident. Mr. Charming had been going about his usual dinner-for-one routine when the contraption showered his home with red and gold sparks...
The article goes on to mention that all fifteen Muggles had to be obliviated and escorted back to their houses, and that the Magical Law Enforcement officers sent to the scene had to chase the vacuum cleaner for a good twenty-four blocks before they could evaporate the spells that were keeping it afloat. Robin laughs at that last part. That is, until he finds the blazing fire in her eyes when he looks up.
"How dare you do this to me?!" she snaps, and that shuts him right up.
"Do what?" he asks, playing up the innocence he can still convey due to the dimples on his cheeks.
"You enchanted that vacuum cleaner," she accuses, without a hint of doubt.
"I did not!" Robin defends.
"It was you," she insists, "I know it was you."
And fine, it was, but there's no possible way she can be certain of this. He has told no one.
Since he started working at the Ministry of Magic, Robin has been creating a little mischief. Emma is a good boss, but the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office is a boring place of work, so who can blame him, really, for wanting a bit of fun on his slow nights?
Regina Mills can, apparently.
"What makes you so sure?" he asks her then, and to his complete and utter delight, she blushes.
"I just know. Now explain yourself," she snaps, but it somehow lacks the full burn she usually gives him, sounding a bit... nervous instead.
Ah. There's something here.
She's the girl that got away. The face he often thinks of when he looks back on his years at Hogwarts. It's been eight years since they graduated. It seems like a lifetime, and she's every bit as beautiful now as she was then. Maybe even more so. Stunning in every way.
He hates himself for letting her slip through his fingertips back then, for trusting the stupid misjudgments of the Wizarding World instead of his own heart. Gryffindor and Slytherin do not mix, he'd been taught, and so he'd watched her from afar, admired the set of her brow and the intent way in which she'd read her Potions book, but never ventured too close.
Not that she ever gave him the time of day. Even when he finally did muster the courage to try and woo her in their sixth year, she was impervious to his charms. They were from enemy houses, after all, and she refused his every advance. Still does, only addresses him when she has to yell at him for something, and has claimed time and again that she found him an insufferable idiot when they were at Hogwarts (she's even made the joke once or twice that his behavior is still the same as it was back then).
And so Robin is left to do all the pining in this non-relationship of theirs, often sighs and watches her go to and from her office in those deep purple robes of hers, the ones with the more modern design that hug her silhouette and have ample space up top to showcase her more exquisite attributes...
"Locksley!" she snaps him out of his thoughts, and he acknowledges her with a mischievous grin.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, "You're so beautiful, sometimes I get a little distracted."
She rolls her eyes at him, but says nothing about the compliment (she's used to them from him at this point, he imagines). Instead, she points a dainty finger at the Prophet again.
"Why did you do this?!" she brings them back to the issue at hand, and Robin clears his throat and denies his role in the incident yet again. "Oh, don't give me that," she chides, "I know you."
"Not as well as I'd like," he teases, wiggling his eyebrows at her comically. And he sees it, that ghost of a smile that she tamps down almost as soon as it shows, and he considers it a victory even as he angers her with another "And it wasn't me."
With a smug raise of her eyebrow, she twirls her wand and mutters an incantation he has never heard before, and then he feels his nose growing, longer and longer as it stretches a good three feet in her direction, his surprise coming out in a strangled What in Merlin's name are you...? that only makes that satisfied grin of hers fuller.
"Pinocchio. Muggle children's story. Read it sometime," she says, and takes her leave with a swishy flick of her green cloak, turning up her nose at him in exasperation as she walks out of the office, warning him, "It won't go back to normal until you've confessed!"
...Robin spends the next two hours accidentally hitting his coatrack with the tip of his nose, and no matter what he tries to make the absurd spell go away, nothing seems to work. It's like even his wand is on Regina's side on this.
Finally, he gives up, and walks out of his office and to the lifts, mumbling apologies when he hits everything and everyone in sight with the long stick that is now his nose. He reaches Regina's space in only three minutes, not because it's close, but because the idea of seeing her again accelerates his pace, and when he's finally there, she's already waiting, perched on the edge of her large wooden desk and looking at him with this triumphant stare that melts him.
"Fine, I did it," he admits at last, and in an instant, his nose goes back to normal, shrinking painfully back into place. "Ow!"
"Serves you right," Regina tells him sternly, then adds, "You violated at least fourteen different Wizarding laws, not the least of which is the Statute of Secrecy."
"The Muggles had their memories fixed, it's alright," Robin waves it off, but she's livid at his nonchalant comment.
"You can't just go around enchanting Muggle objects!" she all but shouts, her anger shining through as she pushes off the desk's edge and paces in front of him.
"I know, I'm sorry," he says as his eyes follow her, and he means it, too. If he had known it would upset her this much, he probably would've thought twice before doing it. And how unlike a Slytherin, he muses, to have such respect for the rules.
"What were you even thinking?" she asks, pausing in front of him at last, and this time she doesn't sound angry so much as tired. Tired of him, he realizes, and it punches him in the gut.
"I wasn't," Robin answers her, trying to get back into her good graces, "I really am sorry. It won't happen again."
She nods curtly, crossing her arms over her chest, and then there's just... silence.
"You have to admit, though, it was quite funny," he teases in an effort to break through the quiet, and she's trying, he can see it, she's trying so hard to keep that annoyance there, but she's also biting back a smile, one that he's not sure he's ever brought out in her before.
"How did you know it was me?" he asks then, because it's been eating at him, how she could know so quickly and so easily that he'd been lying, that he'd been the culprit all along.
"The red and gold sparks," she says immediately, like it's the most obvious thing. "You used to enchant your friend John's Muggle items to shoot red and gold sparks before every Quidditch game."
And Robin beams at her.
"And here I thought you hated everything about me when we were in school," he teases then, because they've been working at the Ministry for the better part of seven months now, and this is the first time she's ever let something like that slip.
She blushes. Caught. And she's... breathtaking. That slight pink tint to her cheeks only accentuates how stunning she is, makes her entire skin glow. But he knows how much it grates on her to show any sign of vulnerability in front of others, especially him, so he doesn't acknowledge it, only chuckles and jokes, "Glad to know you noticed me, at least."
"Oh, please, like you didn't have your share of pretty girls fawning over you," she says with a roll of her eyes.
"And yet there was this one girl, beautiful beyond belief, the only one who ever caught my eye," he tells her, "and she refused my every advance, if you'll believe it. All she did was sit under the Whomping Willow to read..." No one ever understood how she did it, but she was the only one that blasted tree wouldn't harm, and she'd use that to her advantage many times, cornered in her fortress like a queen whose heart was closed off to the world.
He's pleased to see how recounting the story brings a timid smile to her face, one he's not sure she's aware of at the moment, so he continues. "But she never had eyes for me."
"Oh, she did," Regina admits, and the revelation takes him aback for a moment.
When he recovers, he opts for honesty over humor, and confesses, "I wish we had given it a shot."
"My mother would've killed you," Regina says simply, and she's right, he supposes. It's no secret that Cora Mills was a murderous dark witch, hellbent on perpetuating Salazar Slytherin's vile ideals of bloodline purity. She never would've accepted a half-blood Gryffindor as her daughter's boyfriend.
The woman's been dead for almost a decade now, but the memory of growing up with her cannot be a pleasant one, and Robin longs to kiss away the sorrow he sees in Regina's eyes, but they're not there just yet.
He hopes someday they will be.
"Your mother's not here anymore," he mentions, and then he goes for it, asking, "What's stopping you, Regina?"
At her continued silence, he suggests, "We can start small. Just have dinner with me."
Her eyes widen a little as she looks at him, arms crossed over her chest.
"We can't," she automatically says.
"Why not?" he asks her as he moves closer, so close now that he could let his forehead fall gently onto hers if she invited such contact.
He can see her trying to put the words together, trying to explain herself, opening and closing her mouth several times before she settles on, "We work together, we have the same colleagues, and most of them hate me because of who my mother was. They would hate you, too. I don't want that to be... I don't want you to resent me, or to see me the way they do."
"I don't see you that way, I never could," he assures her.
"Then what do you see in me?"
He smiles at that, and answers her truthfully.
"Hopefully the same thing you see in me," he says. "A second chance..."
They've moved somehow closer, and her lips are right there, half open, her tongue peeking out to wet them as she stares at his, and he cannot resist any longer.
Slowly, so as to give her the chance to back out if she so wishes it, he leans in, and to his complete and utter delight, Regina meets him halfway.
It's a kiss that's been years in the making, and it doesn't disappoint.
It starts off sweet. Just a taste, and the softness of her lips pressed to his, the way she moans ever so low in her throat when his mouth opens and his tongue seeks out hers to deepen their exchange... it's intoxicating, and he cannot get enough of her.
She's warm, and soft, and gorgeous, her hand cradling his jaw as she gives his lower lip a teasing little suck and pulls back, breathing in and biting into her smile before she joins her lips with his again in one last, quick smooch.
"...And you're quite a good kisser," Robin adds to his earlier assessment, making her chuckle as he dots a little kiss on the tip of her nose.
"Robin, what are we even doing?" she asks, giving him an incredulous laugh as he takes her hand in his and brings it to his lips, then down to rest against his chest. It doesn't escape him that she's used his first name, and the lovely way it just rolls off her tongue with the raspy timbre of her voice makes his heart beat that much faster.
"Choosing to be happy, as we should've done ten years ago," he answers simply. "Now, will you go to dinner with me, Miss Mills?"
And when she nods, and gives him that elusive, satisfying smile he'll no doubt dream about for the rest of his days, Robin decides maybe there is something to be said for enchanted vacuum cleaners, after all.