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Tweak says, "Next we can take on Starbucks."

Mercedes "Mercy" King (animal_doctor) wrote in indarkness_logs,
@ 2010-10-08 22:00:00

Entry tags:

!complete, 2032 10, mercedes king, severus snape

RP: So, it's not a dream ...
Characters: Mercy, Sev
Time/Date: Evening, October 8
Location: library
Warnings/Rating: None anticipated
Summary: Mercy has concluded this isn't actually a dream
Status: Complete

After the music had died, she'd been pleased. She wasn't sure what she was meant to expect for the following week, and while she'd seen a couple of questionable entries that implied something might be going on, it wasn't anything to affect her.

She also didn't know a lot of people here very well, so it wasn't as though she exactly felt comfortable hitting them up for conversations.

While she'd thought a lot about Severus, she hadn't quite managed to run into him for any extensive period of time. Which, she supposed, was just as well while she was settling in. She'd taken a couple of days to thoroughly explore the island, another couple of days holed up in her room while she gave her sanity serious contemplation, another day or so just wandering around in a daze, and then ... the week was nearly over.

She had met a few people in her wandering. She'd had a decent conversation with a Lily who was a friend of Severus, and who she'd been hard pressed not to badger for information about him. But then, Lily didn't exactly strike her as the sort to spill too much information about another person anyway.

She'd also met Dug, who quickly put an end to the mystery of what dogs would say if they could talk. Strangely enough, it wasn't so very far off from what Mercy had always imagined dogs saying.

Now though, she was done seeking out random people, and she was ready to let random people find her. Carrying her current book in progress to the library, Mercy plopped herself down into a chair and opened up the book. She was fairly certain that she'd be interrupted in no more than ten minutes, and she set the timer on her watch to see if she'd win that bet or not.

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delicate_power
2010-10-14 05:45 am UTC (link)

"You don't have to watch your step," Severus said, shaking his head with a wry grin. "I'm not some sort of ogre." Longbottom probably would have disagreed; even Harry would have when he'd been younger, but that was quite all right. Mercy wasn't his student, after all. Thank God.

He started walking again when she tugged his hand. "He was a great deal like Hitler, actually," he continued quietly, after they'd walked a bit further. And he'd been Joseph Goebbels, in the end ... except an entirely disloyal Goebbels, as it happened. "It never went as far as concentration camps -- we managed to stop him well before then -- but I've no doubt that's where it would have headed eventually."

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animal_doctor
2010-10-14 05:56 am UTC (link)

"Ugh," Mercy shuddered. "Seriously?" She'd been a little flip with her comparison; she hadn't realized how close she was to the reality of his world. "I did a project on that back in junior high. Gave me nightmares for a week solid after I'd done the research for it. And that was just the descriptions, not even the pictures. They wouldn't let us have the books with pictures for fear it would scar us for life."

She nodded thoughtfully. "It probably would have, come to think of it." Well, perhaps not for life, and she'd certainly seen worse in some of her med classes, but still. Young, impressionable minds and all that.

Squeezing his hand lightly, she glanced up to him. "Good thing you stopped him then." There was the faintest lift on the word 'you'; she wasn't certain what part, precisely, he'd played. But he had said we, so it could well be taken as a collective you rather than a specific one.

Blue eyes flicked up to study his profile briefly before turning back to the ground to ensure their path was clear. Or clear enough, anyway.

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delicate_power
2010-10-14 06:42 am UTC (link)

"I'm afraid so," Severus answered, nodding. That wasn't a comparison he would have made lightly, either, but it was fitting. And the Death Eaters had been Hitler Youth. He shuddered a bit, as well, when he thought about it. They had downplayed the racist angle as much as possible whilst recruiting him, but he wished he could say he'd gone into taking the Mark with his eyes closed. He hadn't. It had simply been about his blasted ambition.

"Indeed," was all he said in reply to the bit about stopping the Dark Lord. Yes, Harry had told him he'd been considered a war hero, and wizarding parents named -- other than just him -- named their children after him. But he was still hesitant to crow about his supposed 'accomplishments'. As far as he was concerned, he was still only making up for his own mistakes. Simple as that.

He noticed her glance at him out of the corner of his eye and smiled softly. Even after all that, they were still holding hands, and she was still stealing glances at him when she thought he wasn't looking. Perhaps he wouldn't put her off him, after all. "Would you care to have dinner with me?" he asked, turning his head to face her. Granted, dinner was a communal meal, but they could always take their plates somewhere more quiet, like the library. It wasn't as if Madam Pince was there to chase them out, after all.

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animal_doctor
2010-10-14 07:36 am UTC (link)

"I don't know. I had dinner with you last night," she pointed out. "Sat right next to you and everything," she continued thoughtfully. "Do you think they want help in the kitchen, or is it best not to upset the routine?" Which was a very random tangent, so she shook her head to attempt to put her thoughts back on track.

"Teasing aside, I would enjoy having dinner with you again," she assured him, reasoning that he'd really meant it as a date-like statement rather than simply coordinating their time to meet in the kitchen. She tried to think of a place to go that didn't generally have people. If they didn't eat in the kitchen, the rec room was usually occupied by the people eating in front of the TV. She felt weird about eating in the library; carry-over from school, she was sure. They could cop a bit of floor in the open area of the lobby, or maybe even go sit on the steps and people-watch while they were at it.

Or they could go to one of their rooms. There were tables and chairs there, right? And TVs. So why not? "So your room or mine for dinner then?" she proposed with a grin.

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delicate_power
2010-10-14 09:15 pm UTC (link)

At first, Severus thought the change of subject was an attempt to dodge a question that she didn't particularly care to answer, for fear of hurting his feelings. Though why she would want to hold his hand but not have dinner with him, he wasn't precisely sure. Still, he wouldn't have exactly been surprised by such a turn of events. Therefore, he had just opened his mouth to say that considering what he'd heard from Lily, she had practically been forcibly ousted from dinner preparations, so one attempted to change the arrangements at one's peril, when ... she answered him anyway.

He answered her grin with one of his own, but then gave a slight shrug. "Your room, I think," he answered, thoughtfully. "So that you will have a built in excuse to chuck me out when you've had quite enough of me for one evening." And he was only half-teasing with that comment. Confidence and he had never been on the best of terms, after all.

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animal_doctor
2010-10-14 10:25 pm UTC (link)

"See, that's sort of flawed logic. Then it puts it on me to have to say 'oh, I'm done now, you can leave'. If I went to your room, then I could just leave without having to come up with some creative excuse as to why I was leaving," she pointed out.

"But fair enough. We'll have dinner in my room," she declared. "And you can leave when you're tired of my incessant mostly pointless questions and speculations about things I can't possibly grasp."

Really, she knew she wasn't that bad, and generally her questions were phrased intelligently, and they were usually things she required an answer to to form a more coherent Big Picture, but sometimes once she got going, she really couldn't make herself stop.

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delicate_power
2010-10-14 11:31 pm UTC (link)

"If I thought for a second that you couldn't grasp such things, I wouldn't be wasting my breath, I can assure you," Severus said, casting a sidelong glance at her with a smile. "But I think the logic is only flawed if one presupposes that you would be less than frank regarding when I have overstayed my welcome. So far, you have not given me any reason to assume that you would not be entirely truthful." Even blunt, actually, which he rather liked, if he were being honest. Granted, that trait would probably rub him the wrong way at times, but it was far better than mind games. He'd had enough of those to last him a lifetime.

Though now he rather wished that he had chosen his own room, because he could conjure a vase of roses, and perhaps some candles, if he managed to distract her attention long enough to draw his wand. The trouble was, he didn't know the precise layout of her room yet, and he would hate to make them appear in the middle of the floor or on top of the telly or something. On second thought, maybe he ought to save that for their second date, if there was one. By then, he would be able to visualize her room well enough, he was sure. Or he could simply wait until she nipped off to the loo.

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animal_doctor
2010-10-15 12:25 am UTC (link)

"Well, you don't know what questions lay in store for you," she quipped. "They may well be about things that are simply beyond my mind's ability to comprehend. But I'll keep asking question after question until it reaches a point that I can understand, and then we have to rewind."

She grinned. He did have a point anyway about her frankness. If she was tired of him in her room, she'd certainly be sure to point that out.

Once they reached the hotel, she released his hand to pull open the front doors. After stepping in, she held it open for him, glancing back to him with a little smile. Despite the almost-misadventure in the shack, it had been a nice walk, and she'd be content enough to head back to the library. Or upstairs to have a shower. "So I'll see you tomorrow then, for dinner in my room? I'll try to have it cleaned up."

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delicate_power
2010-10-15 01:24 am UTC (link)

"Point taken," Severus answered, nodding. Though she hadn't really asked anything too outlandish, so far. All of them had been fairly practical questions, which he also liked. But if she did not appear to understand his answers, at some point, he would simply have to try again until he could phrase his answer in a way that his meaning become more clear. They'd gotten there in the end with the Dark Lord, after all. He imagined they could do so with other subjects, as well. And besides, it wasn't as if he didn't enjoy talking with her. He would have been perfectly frank about that if he didn't.

He couldn't help smiling when she mentioned having her room cleaned up in time for dinner the following evening. It was almost as if she had somehow guessed that he liked things exceedingly tidy. "Tomorrow, then," he answered, with a nod. He tried not to frown when he realized his chances for a goodnight kiss had likely just evaporated on the spot, but considering how nervous the idea made him, it was probably just as well. Besides, the lobby was hardly the proper place for a snog, when just about anybody could walk in on them.

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animal_doctor
2010-10-15 01:31 am UTC (link)

"All right," she replied before she leaned in and pressed her lips against his cheek. "I suppose this is good night then," she said as she drew back. Maybe, she reflected, she'd stop by the mall tomorrow before dinner and see if there was anything a little nicer than jeans there. Not a dress, mind; she wouldn't go that far. But surely there were some nice slacks or at least a nicer blouse that wouldn't look horribly out of place with a pair of jeans.

Something, anyway. She hadn't done a lot of dating back home, but she still recalled the basic ideas behind it. Maybe she'd even go far as finding some lipgloss and body spray.

With that plan forming, she nodded slightly to herself before she lifted her blue eyes to him. "Goodnight, Sev," she murmured as she met his eyes.

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delicate_power
2010-10-15 02:51 am UTC (link)

His eyes sank closed when she kissed his cheek, and it was all Severus could do not to slip his arm about Mercy's waist and pull her closer. He settled instead for placing a hand on her upper arm and giving it a gentle squeeze. Then he exhaled with a soft sigh, opening his eyes once more, as she pulled away. Oddly enough, when she was so close like that, his nerves had been the very last thing on his mind. Perhaps that was a hopeful sign that when the time came, he wouldn't actually freeze.

"Goodnight, Mercy," he said quietly, giving her a soft smile, even as his stomach turned a flip. As much as he would have liked to stand there and stare into her eyes all evening, however, she had said it was goodnight, and ... well, he could take the hint. So she really wouldn't have to invent some half-baked excuse to get him to leave her room the following night. He stepped away then, sliding his hand down her arm until he reached her hand, and he gave that a gentle squeeze, as well, before he turned away.

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