michelle (concentrating) wrote in caged, @ 2013-11-19 23:42:00 |
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Stephen quietly moved around his four-poster after Padma settled in against the pillows at his headboard. He gathered up his journal to put on the nightstand, along with a quilt then moved to join her. He sat down next to her gingerly, not wanting to make her spill the hot tea she held in her lap, and set the quilt near her knees so she could take it if she wanted to. As a last step, he flicked his wand to draw the curtains around half of the bed to give them something akin to privacy if his roommates got curious.
Then he sat, cross-legged and quiet, not staring, but obviously listening, content not to ask her anymore questions although his mind was filled with them. She looked stricken and sickly, and he knew a normal person would clutch her hand, or squeeze her arm. His bony fingers even curled and uncurled at the thought, but he decided against it - an unnatural gesture may be worse than none at all.
Padma was hardly concerned about his roommates. Stephen, all things considered, was very well off. He was in good company, which was the primary reason why she had wanted to meet him up here rather than in the common room. But even still- even with the comfort of knowing that the company she kept was safe. Even in knowing that Stephen, her best friend, would be happy to listen to her and comfort her. Even then, she still felt terribly, terribly forlorn and achey.
And did she even have a right to? She had made her bed, and she was being forced to sleep in it. Did she have any right to gripe? She hadn’t noticed the blanket that Stephen had brought back with him, nor did she look up when he sat back down. She only stared into her cup of tea, as if suddenly the answers would just pour out as clear as day.
The knot in her stomach tightened as she started to lift the cup to her mouth. They had volunteered for it, but what if the consequences were worse than they had anticipated? What if they-
Her thoughts stopped, and she put the cup back down onto her lap before she could even take a drink.
“I’m afraid.”She hardly recognized her own voice, it being a little raw from having thrown up not ten minutes before, and then five minutes before that. Her expression didn’t change, though she did look up at the curtains that surrounded his bed.
Stephen had patiently been waiting, although he wasn’t sure if she’d end up actually saying anything. When she asked him to sit with her, he was content for that to be all it was. But tonight’s events seemed to have disturbed her more than any thus far in the school year. While he was pretty inept at social interactions himself, he was extremely observant - especially with his best friend, and he wished he had a better idea of what to do. So when she finally spoke up, he looked over to her sympathetically.
“Yes,” he said softly. He didn’t have any knowledge by which to comfort her, so he stuck to just trying to listen instead. “That is…” Logical? Understandable? “... human,” he finished.
If there was anything Padma could rely on to be her constant right now, it was Stephen. It never failed. He was always so practical and intelligent, even when she failed to be. Despite the situation, she gave a faint smile and looked up at him, nodding her head before finally taking a sip of the tea he had charmed up for her.
“To be human,” she sighed as she finally noticed the blanket he had brought up. Tugging at the quilt with one hand, she managed to drape it over their laps with a little bit of difficulty. “Stephen,” she began, taking another slow, contemplative sip of her tea. “Do you really understand why I…” Well. “Why I can’t turn your name in?”
He did, for the most part, or at least he thought so. It was the same reason the idea of them finding out about Padma had made him volunteer. “We are best friends. It would… hurt you. If they hurt me.” He cleared his throat and ran a long finger along the edge of the quilt. “The feeling is mutual.” He turned to her and raised a brow, feeling a bit like his stomach and lifted into his throat. “That does not mean it isn’t a logical option.” Stephen’s lips quirked into a slight smile that mirrored hers. “But I understand your choice.”
She wasn’t used to feeling this… vulnerable? Weak? Open? Her nostrils flared and her nose wrinkled as she exhaled jaggedly, her lips pursing. If she opened them right now, she was almost certain she would vomit up all over again. Swallowing hard, she nodded very quickly, but very firmly.
“It would hurt me very, very much.” When did she finish off her tea? She hadn’t realized it was empty until she had gone to take another drink. Awkwardly pretending to take a sip, she set it off to the side. “Stephen Cornfoot, you’re incredibly brave. I admire you.” And though she was unaware of it, her smile mirrored his, even if it was only a copy of her own.
Now his eyes widened comically behind his large glasses and he let out a nervous laugh. “I… uh-” Compliments always made his collected persona crumble to the much more twitchy and unsure individual underneath. “Heh,” he tried, shaking his head slightly, his large ears tinging with red. “I believe you are biased,” he attempted, glancing to the side self-consciously.
“No, no, no,” Her smile wasn’t a copy of a copy anymore. She nodded, prepared to have him drown in his own awkwardness if it meant getting it across to him that, yes. He was fantastic. “I mean it. You’re very strong. I wish you could see it as clearly as I could.” She had just said the same thing to Ginny, although it hadn’t occurred to her that what she saw in Stephen, he couldn’t see himself.
“Um,” he murmured again, “Well. Thank you.” He cleared his throat and awkwardly went to pat her knee, although the gesture was almost mechanical because he didn’t know what to do. “I think you are much braver.” His fidgeting stilled and he glanced back to her carefully, but didn’t continue with his thoughts. He had decided when they were talking in the journals that he would not voice his thoughts about her in Dumbledore’s Army. It was safer for her that way.
There was a pause before he gestured toward her cup. “Would you like more?”
She tensed a little (and just as awkwardly) as he touched her knee, and stared at the spot for a moment too long. Clearing her throat, she shook her head and gave a single ‘heh’ at her next exhale. “If I were brave, I wouldn’t have listed any names at all,” she whispered, as if keeping her voice low would nullify the shame she felt.
Her head lifted at the mention of more tea. “Oh, please.” She grabbed it, and handed it to him. “You don’t want any? I feel rude, drinking in front of you.”
He nodded, taking her cup and sliding off the bed, then made his way to his desk where he had the tea charmed to stay hot. Refilling her cup and pouring one for himself, he moved back over to his bed and returned it to her. He stood for a moment, sipping his tea so it wouldn’t be easily spilled, then sat again, leaning back against his headboard, less tense than he’d been initially.
“Perhaps you are just smarter than you are brave, but they are not mutually exclusive,” he said, his tone a bit lighter, but still sincere. “It is wiser to keep your badge. For a variety of reasons.”
“I don’t-” She paused, her teeth biting into her lower lip as she thought better of what she wanted to say. She knew that he knew of her involvement in Dumbledore’s Army, but to imply the goings on would be wrong. It wasn’t a conversation to be had with him, even if she knew he would have wonderful insight to her dilemma. He always did.
“Stephen, I want to keep my badge so that I can protect those I care about to the best of my ability, but does harming others in the process justify that? I can’t promise that nothing will happen to- to whomever. What if I put the nail in the coffin for somebody? What kind of prefect does that make me?” She was working herself up again, but she felt it was too late to go back now.
Stephen’s lips pressed together in thought. He wasn’t the type to leap to conclusions even if it might console someone. Everything had to be analyzed first. He couldn’t just tell her that it wouldn’t change anything - that would be a lie and not even a very comforting one. He looked at her steadily as he mulled it all over in his head.
“... human,” he repeated finally.
That settled her down quickly. Her eyes widened, and she stared at him in the same way she was wont to do when he was giving a compelling description about a new town, or new area in their Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
How did he do that? She had been so prepared to fight her point tooth and nail. She had been prepared to villainize herself, to tell him that she was wrong and that nothing could justify her actions, because that was what she wanted to hear.
And there, he had diffused her with a single word.
Her eyes closed, and she slouched, but this time it wasn’t against the pillows he had offered her; it was against him. “I don’t know how you do it.”
He blinked down at her, but didn’t move a muscle, lest she think he was uncomfortable with the physical contact - even though he was sure his heart hadn’t beat so quickly in some time. “Do what?”
“You always know what to say. It’s ridiculous. Zacharias and I would have been at it for the next thirty minutes,” she admitted a little lamely, although she didn’t really know where the confession had come from.
Or when she had gotten so casual about leaning up against somebody who wasn’t Parvati.
He smiled a bit at that, exhaling a breath he hadn’t meant to be holding. “I have extensive experience observing Padma-like species,” Stephen tried lamely, lifting the hand that wasn’t comfortably pinned between them to push the spectacles up his long nose.
She laughed, genuinely laughed, her hand (her free one-) going to cover her face (-because there wasn’t any way that she was going to move her pinned arm, either.) to hide her toothy, awkward smile.
“And what information has this yielded for you?” she teased, just as lamely, barely resisting the urge to nudge into him with her dead-still arm.
Stephen grinned broadly when he heard her laugh and attempted to look thoughtful to play along, but was only semi-successful. “The Padmacus Patilius likes her tea bitter, no sugar, with a small amount of milk,” he started, gesturing at the cup perched in her lap, “... goes through quills on average biweekly, although quicker if it is the time of academic exams. She paces when nervous - usually in the east corner of the common room, and…” he turned to look down at her, brows lifting in apology. “usually tries to hide her enjoyment of the singing group Wand Direction from her peers.”
As if reminded, Padma lifted the cup to her lips to take another drink. She had been neglecting it, though she hadn’t meant to. The cup lingered. She had only expected him to stop at the tea. He hadn’t, and she found herself being confronted with little quirks and ticks that she didn’t think anybody had ever really noticed before. She took the cup away from her mouth as soon as he mentioned Wand Direction. Her lower lip sucked in her upper lip, getting rid of the tea that had made itself into a mock mustache.
Was the heat from the tea, or was her face actually hot?
She floundered, staring at him affectionately as she tried to think of some way to combat what he had just said. She couldn’t.
“Wow, Stephen.”
Now it was his turn to blush, realising maybe listing a bunch of facts about his best friend may not have been appropriate. “I am sorry,” he started, brows lifting further into his fringe, his grin turning nervous. “I like details,” he offered with a loud swallow. “It… um, helps me write…” He turned to sip his own tea that had been sitting on top of his quilted lap untouched since he sat down.
“No!” she blurted out, her still-arm now moving awkwardly to his side. She touched it gingerly, uncaring as to how bony it may have been. “You have no reason to be sorry! I just- I.. didn’t think anyone had really- had. Had really-” she was reduced to the stammering second year she had been what felt that ages ago, and for a moment she realized exactly how Stephen felt when he was in the presence of someone he found to be wonderful and, not that it mattered, but pretty. “Write? Right.” And, like him, she occupied herself with her almost empty cup of tea.
Stephen could still hear his heart thumping away in his ears as his cheeks stayed red, but he had to put down the teacup because he’d started laughing. At himself. At Padma sounding like he usually did. Because he needed to laugh. Then he hiccuped and covered his face and hiccup-laughed again.
And then he was laughing, and so of course Padma had no option but to follow suit, laughing in the way she only did in front of her close friends, which involved quite a few snorts. She crumpled against him as her laughs started to subside, her head shaking back and forth slowly. Incredulously. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Stephen,” she grinned, and dissolved into another fit of affectionate, good natured laughter.