A rotund Natterjack toad belched by an otherwise undisturbed freshwater creek, surrounded by aquatic greeny and an untrod promenade.
By all means it had no reason to expect an oncoming assault, nevertheless it's vertical iris provided but the shortest of seconds to blink protectively before curious muddy water was splashed obnoxiously into it's triple-lidded eye ball by a very determined Slytherin boy passing by.
"Come now Wonderland, pick up your ball gown - wouldn't want Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum to get you!" Draco Malfoy called backwards half-jokingly as he meandered along the riverbed with his posh girlfriend in tow, the sunlight nearly a memory of it's former glory in the sky.
Audette pointed a stained white glove at his back where he'd magnetically strapped his expensive black broomstick at a forty-five degree angle, presenting nothing short of an athletic dream in his flickering emerald Quidditch robes and waving white locks, "Would you be quiet? Your decidingly barbarian shouting will scare off the nargles, which I require to locate samples unless you expect us to starve this evening."
Draco turned around and slapped his gloves off of his beige trousers, shaking his long hair in hilarity, "Now you sound just like my lunatic cousin, Bellarose. Nargles are a forgery of thought. You have approximately five seconds to catch up to me or I'll be left no choice but to carry you inappropriately over my shoulder."
"Perhaps to the absent minded or inattentive, and I would think you above exacting such a scandalous action by now. I'm a lady who may walk independently," Audette snapped back, wishing she were not forced to depend on draining her wandless magic just to allocate precious resources, her hand shivering over each bush eagerly in search of the sparkling insects.
It would be in that moment, incredibly useful to have access to her father's magical monocle - not that she'd ever had the pleasure. Not that anyone had ever. Audette sometimes surmised that Montgomery slept with the critical glass pane over his eye.
Draco stood there in the shallow water, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes, "Oh my mistake, I'd nearly forgotten how much of a lady you are after you practically seduced me into full-blown copulation last night."
Audette smiled wickedly without turning his way, plucking at a bush exhibiting dichromatic venation, "You surprise me with your complaint of our evening. Did you not enjoy yourself, Draco?"
She heard the splash of his boots in the water as he trod back after her, speaking with sarcastic frustration, "Oh no quite the opposite, Audette, it was positively harrowing...Your honour happens to matter to me, and you're making it impossible for me to be a gentleman. Don't brag about it. Now let's go - once it is dark we cannot move any further and you test my tolerance."
Having grown up nearly abandoned in a glass biome at Castle Bellarose, Audette as it was had begun to operate on botanical and herbotalogical impulses, irritatingly stopping inwards of the waterway multiple times to pluck at magical plants, collecting what she deemed to be vital and useful samples. She'd even managed to amass four fairly decent low hung apples, nettles, and dittany - although her well-intended gardening was at the cost of Draco's patience.
"You? A gentleman? Don't you ballyhoo me, Mr. Malfoy," Audette glanced up coquettishly at where he'd stopped next to her in looming force.
"Why the fuck are you gardening?" his handsome features rippled in disapproving wonder at the disaster of clippings and gatherings in a makeshift bowl within her dress. From the glare on his face she half expected him to slap away the collection into a frenzied splash of trimmings.
Audette brazenly waltzed around him whilst maintaining the pouch on her burnt skirt, barely containing her urge to manically giggle at the scoff he released in her ear. The bow on her lower back bounced adorably as she scrambled in her slippers over slick rocks within the riparian zone, "Alright, lead the way on this godforsaken promenade, seeing as you are the supposed gentleman here."
The terrain was awash with a dusky blue glow that produced a surreal sense of temporal reality. Low mist hung in heavy patches that only seemed to be expanding to overtake the area where they were actively passing below the overpass of the first arch, which felt more like a daunting overhead freeway from the gigantic scale of the pillars.
He had landed them just before the gargantuan stone megalith, explaining that beyond that limit, flying was strictly prohibited and they would have to complete the trial to the rainbow finish line on foot.
And that, as she was his responsibility to babysit, she was expected to move during the daytime at supersonic speed so to prevent the compromise of his ranking.
It would be dark very shortly, in no more than twenty minutes, and those bioluminescent critters that evolve the night into a paradise of lights started to pop up. Twinkling blue fairies, green fireflies and glow worms alike brought the shadowy masses to life, taking over for the lost sun which had just dropped away to a pale pink hum on the skyline.
He walked beside her, his silver eyes caught sideways on the substitute basket of medicines and goodies she had foraged before taking an apple without permission. In the chilly breeze he began to toss it up and down dangerously close to her face, "You grew up with the Magizoologist - tell me everything I need to know about the way his mind works. What sort of creatures originate in Ireland that I should be worried about in here?"
"Hmm let's see, myself for one," Audette sent him glittery eyes filled with coy, her smile thin and villainous.
"No doubt, you saucy little minx," Draco popped his manicured eyebrows down at her appraisingly, gnawing huge gashes out of the apple as if it were the first time he'd eaten anything in a century, "Go on, do elaborate on actual veritable beasts - preferably not ones with dance cards strapped to their wrists."
He geared away from the river finally and Audette's hope that they might build a fire inflamed irrationally, even though fire had just about annihilated her from the planet an hour earlier. He stepped through the thick moss and swaying feathery grass, metal gear from his broomstick and his belt clanking as he went.
She watched him in desirous swoon as he halted at the base of a gigantic ash tree with several codominant stems, each over two meters in diameter, all reaching for the sky in wide spreading limbs. His pale eyes scanned the design of the elderly tree of at least three centuries age - brown gloves cinching in several intervals as he gripped the diamond-shaped ridges of the bark - while Audette ranted behind him like a deranged cuckoo.
She placed her plunderous pile down and tore away a segment of her ruined dress to create a mobile sack for the delicate contents, "Well let's see. Montgomery is cutthroat and will have selected the worst and most glaringly evil creatures, but there isn't too much dangerous in Ireland for him to manipulate."
She hung her right glove horizontal to yank her fingers back in counting gesture one by one as Draco craned his neck dramatically to inspect the hardwood specimen, "You've already met the Stone Giants, then there will be Imps which are only pests but their wizard crackers are a veritable scald to the skin, a Leprechaun I would not be concerning myself with - they're devilish idiots. There are Kelpies - shape-shifting water demons, and Jarveys, Thestrals, and Porlocks...the Merrows - nasty Irish merpeople, and the graceful Augurey which cries before it rains, some say before a death-"
Draco turned around laughing at her with the lime green apple sunk in his pearly teeth, shirking off his sleek broomstick to place it against the base of the tree, "-Okay, okay you nagster, I asked about worrisome creatures, not a compendium of everything breathing."
Audette felt slightly belittled, "Well Banshees in rural Ireland are quite capable of killing one with a singular ear piercing scream, so father says."
"I'm sure the same value applies to yourself when your decorative bonnet flips off in the wind," Draco chuckled in brisk hilarity.
"Then I suppose your days are limited to the next blustery occcurence. Are we perhaps conspiring to build a fire now?" Audette inquired curiously, following him in a desperate loop of satiny sashay around the treetrunk. Instead she was put off guard when he started tugging his way up the rind with superb athletic grace, leaving her unattended to on the softscape.
He tittered in hilarity, jumping to catch a climbing hold out of reach, "Are you mad? And attract every vile thing for kilometers? I hope you're still mildly inept at ascending trees, Wonderland, we're not sleeping down there. You heard Dumblebore about the night."
When he was atop a low hung branch he peered over the tip of his pointy nose to discover that Audette still had not moved a muscle from the mossy carpet, wringing her silken hands in uncertainty.
She shivered, blinking at the hauntingly black forest, the hordes of vibrant, florid mushrooms dotting the husk of the ash tree, then back at the trickling river - totally aghast at how on Earth she was expected to sleep in a rigorous tree for more than five minutes before barreling off to her untimely death.
Draco read her mind, patting a spot next to him where he was dangling his lanky legs, "Afraid, Bellarose?"
Yes.
On the contrary, there did not seem to be any other option. Even the transitory circumstance of him being up there and herself on the ground was blood curdling in the exotic landscape.
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Before attempting anything contrivably disheveling, Audette embraced the wildnerness and reached down to gather her singed dress train, proceeding to rip off a good two feet of fabric so that it ended closer to her knees for the sake of flexibility. She tossed aside both soiled hand gloves, and with the grace of a goose began her blundering clamber.
"You forgot the knee high socks," Draco clicked his tongue teasingly, laughing openly as she slipped multiple times on mossen branches.
After eight miserable minutes she reached the top and plunked herself next to him, combing through her tangled golden locks with furious vigor.
Draco mindlessly finished off the green apple then took a second one indulgently from her ransack, obviously famished from the chaos earlier.
Audette secretly felt her pride swell that she had somehow contributed to his comfortability, watching bashfully as he consumed the fruit with enthusiam.
Then in a dreadfully ironic circumstance they were left silently situated side by side on a massive tree branch once again, reflecting their eleven year old selves in the Bellarose greenhouse perfectly.
All that was missing was the moronic presence of an ensorcelled Mr. Bubbles and the fiery habitat suns in their faces.
It was impossible that both of their minds were not awash with this blatant reminder.
It grew silent then, inexplicably awkward and nerve-wracking.
Draco threw away his latest apple core into the blackness of the forest and scratched the back of his head, turning his face away from her in a deep sigh.
As her heart commenced slamming at a most unforgivable pace Audette did her best to diffuse the raging romantic tension.
She pointed just above the musically bubbling creek at where a pack of golden, glowing Celtic pixies were arranging themselves into different ancient runes to communicate their collective interpretations of the nearby environment, "Look Draco, Celtic pixies. They fly in packs - like fish swimming in schools - so they might communicate logographically. I do wish I knew what that rune is they keep repeating."
His silvery eyes focused on the giggling pixies, falling apart and reforming the same orthogonal symbol, "It means...never mind."
"What does it mean?" Audette chewed on her plump lip in ardent fervour, not shocked in the slightest that his incredible mind could decipher venerable runes.
He snapped off his flying robe from around his neck and hung the shiny green fabric from an overhead branch, sifting his fingers through his icy hair, "I said never mind."
Sensing now that he was overwhelmed by the deja-vu sweltering between them, she decided it would be better to simply break the ice.
Audette reached out her bare hand and pressed it against his green and silver Slytherin quidditch sweater, commanding once again the heated pink handprint to appear on his chest. It would be a lovely warmth for the night if he didn't explode and demand it's instant removal. She often used the unique magic to heat T-T's tiny bed, expecting the effect to be of similar ambrosia.
"You're it," Audette whispered gently, searching for his avoidant gaze to meet hers but he never did.
Instead he smirked ever so slightly as the magic brightened his downcast eyes in the dark making them appear nearly translucent. The corner of his lip gradually curled up, "Is this my cue to push you from the branch?"
"If you lay a finger on me I will slap you silly once I am back up here," Audette weakly warned. Despite the credible threat she dared to shift closer so that their legs were touching and leaned her sleepy head on his shoulder, mesmerized by the Celtic pixies' beautiful arrangements over the water which refracted pools of shifting golden light.
A curious little Moke came along to skitter on Draco's left knee - an Irish green lizard of sorts that could shrink it's size to microscopic limitations in the blink of an eye. They both snorted when he reached out his pale fingers multiple times for it to responsively pop out of existence, then right back again.
Swimming in his scent and exhausted from the terrifying day, Audette had nearly fallen asleep upright when he spoke again in his luxuriously dark tone, "Surprising that Montgomery allowed you to attend Hogwarts instead of Erenholl."
Audette sighed heavily, sadness in her droopy voice, "I wished to be far, far away from my parents, especially my father. He's vicious to me - I suppose the disdain is a two-sided blade."
He was quiet for another long, drowsy minute and Audette was increasingly in serious danger of face planting out of the tree when he spoke again in a whipsery tang, "My father is vicious as well. They're associates you know, Lucius and Montgomery. For similar reasons I preferred Durmstrang, but my mother is completely useless without my being an arms length away."
"So we bare more in common than I thought," Audette interlaced their fingers in his lap, only to accidentally activate the blue screen of his modern watch in the darkness. Both of their faces illuminated then with an unnatural provocation for five stark seconds before the digital anger absolved into itself.
She could not help seeing every aspect of him in that moment. Lucius Malfoy was infamous for his barbaric attitude and practices, yet his son certainly had done his best to cover up any notion that he was being subjected to such violence.
For eight straight years Audette had been of the blinding impression that Draco Malfoy could go galloping off to his father for demands at the drop of a hat and procure exactly what he wanted without penalty.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps this boy could understand her better than anyone, perhaps she had even found her matchmaking in him after all.
Their lives at home were dreadfully alike, and she had been on more adventures since dating him than all four years combined with Theodore, who's sole intent had been to keep Audette padded up safely at a parlor tea table and away from any rewarding enterprises.
Against his shoulder she craned her face up to his, now wide awake and uncomfortably aware of her own jagged breathing.
The usually menacing boy stared down at her with slanted eyes, holding her tantric gaze, "What?"
Audette swallowed painfully and squeezed his cold hand, "You make me feel as though my restrictive upbringing isn't relevant...that you understand me, and that I am able to embody my unmodified self. I...appreciate you, Draco."
No.
I love you.
She did not possess the bravery to say it aloud, breathing tensely through a stabbing fear at just the thought of his rejection should she risk the three weighty words.
"Hmm, don't get ahead of yourself," he hummed absently, his eyes traveling up the trail of luminous mushrooms on the tree, and the Moke which had moved on to childishly jumping between the large disks.
He took several deep breaths then puffed out air, his eyelids harshly shutting away his precious diamond gaze which had begun to appear more like shooting stars in the bioluminescence.
Controversy now claimed his tone, "Audette, your father has asked me to..."
The pause in his trailing sentence was too much. Nerves stood her hair on end in baseless conjecture, "Well don't frighten me Draco, dish it up."
She watched him shake his head rapidly, lines forming on his nose as he sought the correct words to whatever was going on in his complex mind, "I must comprehend your perspective on our future together. Has your father spoken with you about our relationship terms?"
She stared at the side of his face curiously, the odd blemish or so in his pale skin the only indication that he was a real boy and not a dream come true in the moonbeam peaking through the leafy canopy above.
Oh Merlin, he could only be suggesting one thing, but Audette's mind spiraled into denial.
She started, then lost her way immediately to a blushing rhapsody, "No, but I-It's rather sudden still, isn't it? I can't deny feeling utterly enraptured, but...well, I mean, by perspective surely you don't mean..?"
Audette now wished her hair was a wig she could turn backwards and hide her face behind when his eyebrows noticeably tented.
Draco shut the eye closest to her and squinted at the Celtic pixies, obviously perplexed by the response. He ran his long fingers along his chin in her peripherals, "Based on that reaction I believe you already know. He's chosen to view this relationship with a certain...candor...with the expectation of serious commitment from me, somewhere down the line."
"Is that why you refuse to bed me?" Audette leaned back suspiciously.
"No, that choice is unrelated to your father," Draco flatly responded in cold ambiguity. His attention had anchored itself to the Celtic pixies unblinkingly, his expression rigid and unforgiving.
Audette shook his hand stubbornly in his lap, "Then do state it point blank. When you mention silly frivolities such as duchess-to-be and formal intended; are you not meaning to jest? Have I been correct to wonder at the seriousness behind your use of such rhetoric?"
Draco nodded so lightly she wasn't sure if her eyes had misapplicated the movement in the waking darkness, "I'm not petrified by the dedication he's requesting. You've been the object of my desires for as long as I may recall, and you will make an exceptionally fine duchess when I inherit the Malfoy estate, the obvious choice in fact. Being here in this tree reminds me of just how long I have been in love with you, Audette."
He sat there still as a stone, as if he couldn't bare the intensity of what had just slipped past his lips and out into the chilly evening air.
She saw his free hand drop to anxiously fiddle with the folds in his beige trousers. His eyes closed again slowly as if dread were an instant poison circulating in his veins, "It would not be immediately, of course, mainly tentative. A pillar for our permission."
The freezing thrill that shot down her spine like a letter in a pneumatic tube left her feeling as woozy and delirious as she had three-thousand feet in the sky earlier. Each cell in her body shook with electricity at the confirmation, a loopy grin spreading on her face.
It had started with a dare to date a boy whom she'd deemed hopelessly arrogant and unchaste, meant to be a ridiculous endeavour to win back an old flame. Now, it felt as if their hearts would never be disentangled.
In the wake of his shivering bravery she found her own, tip-toeing her fingers up his chest which still vibrated with the glowing handprint to tap his nose sweetly, "I love you too, Draco."
Audette ran two fingers along his sharp jaw to guide his nose to hers for one long, singular kiss. At any moment surely, she would awake from the most blissful, teasing dream of her life.
Perhaps she had died on that stone giant and gone to some simulation of her own heaven.
Perhaps she would awake back at the very beginning of the school year having imagined the entire thing, only for him to accuse her of stripping Umbridge's office for fabric and watch him walk away laughing at her in whole-hearted disinterest.
Thankfully neither were the case. Draco broke the longing embrace after a minute and shot her a genuinely handsome and rare smile. He then stood on the immense branch, hanging loosely from the one overhead, "Alright that's enough of that. Time to go to sleep."
"Where...?" Audette whispered in bleak confusion, as if a bed had just sprung up that she alone could not perceive.
She watched him slump with his back against the trunk while unraveling what appeared to be thick climbing rope from his belt. When he had a large spool of it loosened he beckoned her to place herself between his legs with a pat on the bark.
Audette did as she was told, laying her back against his chest and her legs straight ahead, the spool of rope landing in her lap, "Surely you are not planning to tie us here?"
"No, I was planning to form a set of his and her nooses. Obviously I'm strapping us to the tree," he lined his legs up flat against hers on either side, and with his chin on her shoulder he raised both hands over the twine.
His fingers shook, bending at the tips in concentration to wandlessly enact psychokinesis.
The silver rope obeyed, wrapping like a viper around their ankles and the tree branch, all the way to their hips and the main trunk. Two final straps harnessed across Audette's front, and suddenly they were immobile save for their arms.
Draco slid his emerald flight robe off the tree branch and wrapped it around Audette's front and over his shoulders, crossing his arms protectively around her waist below the makeshift blanket.
Somehow, under the rotund glare of the white moon they fell asleep with their heads pressed together to a symphony of burping toads, rippling water and rustling leaves - only barely missing the Celtic pixies rearranging into a horrifying symbol of danger.