Who: Emmeline Vance & Caradoc Dearborn
What: Hogsmeade weekend!
Where: Hogsmeade xD
When: Noonish
"You know," Emmeline said, squirming up against the brick back wall of Honeydukes, "you're making this awfully difficult."
She grinned though, fingers working quickly to finish the knot in the string she was attempting to tie around Caradoc's wrist. It had started as a joke, something about how he was sure he was going to forget her name by the time the summer rolled around, but now she was a bit more than determined to get the reminder string around his wrist. Emmeline knew it was supposed to go around your finger, but she figured that around the wrist would last a lot longer than a string ring that would probably get thrown off and into the rubbish bin the moment she turned around--or, no, probably before.
So---it was silly, it was a bit more than silly, but she was allowed to be. They were
supposed to go to the Order house to help with Sirius, and she'd
told Caradoc that they should, right away...but he was quite good at this whole persuasion business. At least she was keeping track of time. It had only been about five minutes...she was pretty sure.
Emmeline's head tilted, unsure how she was able to get this done with Caradoc paying little to no attention to the job at hand. Of course, he was paying a lot of attention to
other jobs, at a more
literal hand, but she was still proud at her multi-tasking skills. With one final tug, Emmeline let out a happy noise and kissed his wrist (well, mostly the string). "
There."
He had been vaguely aware that Emmeline was doing something with his arm, touching it or--- something, but Caradoc hadn't been paying too much attention to what she was so interested in. He had much better things to focus on, like Emmeline's neck, and pushing her up against the wall to make sure anyone who saw them knew, and snogging her senseless, and---
She definitely had just kissed his wrist. Out of all the things that they could possibly doing right now, she decided to... kiss his wrist. Jerking away from Emmeline's neck, Caradoc slipped his left hand out of Emmeline's grasp and brought it up to their faces, and more light, to see what what she had been doing.
"You did not just tie that thing onto me," he scoffed, taking his other hand off the wall from behind her head to further inspect his left wrist. His fingers wrapped around the dark blue string tightly, and began to tug at it. She wasn't... serious, was she? Caradoc wouldn't hear the end of it if anyone saw this, even though he was fairly certain he would be able to come up with some lie covering up for it, but--- no. It would eventually get back to
her which would... make things difficult. So he just as well take it off now to avoid any future pain.
After a few more seconds of tugging (and holding his arms just out of Emmeline's reach), the thick string untangled. With a smile, he took her hand and opened it up to drop it back into her palm. "Thank you."
Oh,
honestly.
Caradoc was quite lucky she was stuck between him and the wall, because that was absolutely unnecessary. It wasn't that horrid of a thing, and Emmeline's hand clasped around the string as she decided that
next time, she would just have to put a hex on it. And there was definitely going to be a next time, Caradoc
really didn't know what he was getting into, taking off her string. She would have huffed if there was room for her to take a deep enough breath, but simply pushed the string back into her pocket and then plastered both hands to the sides of his face.
"And you think you'll still be allowed to snog me now?" she murmured as she pulled his face close to kiss him.
Well. She wasn't going to waste the short time they had, that would just be silly. No, she'd figure out how to get that string on him another time, right now she just wanted to kiss him and make sure they kissed
a lot, because a month was a bloody long time to wait. Stupid---she'd promised the headmaster that she wouldn't leave Hogwarts unless it was a serious Order situation, so she had
that on her conscience to think about, and it was just ruddy annoying that she had the perfect chances to escape and see Caradoc and
couldn't because the headmaster would...he'd...Emmeline had no idea what Dumbledore would do to her, and that was kind of frightening.
With Juliet fully aware and approving (approving!) of their interesting situation, Emmeline had no problem with the public displays of affection. Of course they were never slight like hand holding and random behind the back hugs, but the excessive snogging against buildings was perfectly fine with her. At least she had the decency to pull him a bit down the alley between the stores.
"Mmhmm," he hummed, smiling as he nodded at her. Caradoc was nearly sure, at this point, that he could get away with almost anything. Well, maybe not
everything, but if he had so blatantly disregarded her gift at any other time when they didn't only have just about three hours to see each other until the next month, he was fairly certain Emmeline would murder him on the spot. And by murder, he meant torture and harass the living daylights out of him until he begged to wear the stupid string from her scarf for the rest of his life.
But no, that wasn't what right now was about. Right now was about--- hm, a lot of things. Like getting her to completely forget about going to the Order house (which was already working beautifully), because honestly enough, he didn't feel like spending another minute there. Potter was becoming increasingly annoying by the day, and Caradoc wasn't exactly sure why Emmeline was so keen on helping out. It wasn't exactly like they had things to do, or even something to work from; nothing had changed. Either way, there were much more productive things that they could do, and while they couldn't
exactly do what he really wanted to do because it was Hogsmeade, he would settle for some productive, hot snogging.
"I'll only forget---- your first name," he said through the side of his mouth, finding it hard to talk when she held onto his face, almost squishing his cheeks together and snogging at the same time. His hands moved back to the wall for support, or at least for a moment until he found it was much better to simply wrap an arm tightly around her waist.
"Promise," Caradoc finished, gripping tightly onto her side by clutching her shirt in between his fingers.
She let out something of an approving sound as hands slid down to grab at the collar of his shirt; Emmeline would normally think herself quite the slag for snogging someone like this so quickly (though that had been ruined the first day he tackled her into the wall of her flat), but. She really didn't care this time. Even with Remus, who she had also known for years, she had been more than concerned about what other people would think, but
really. How much more slack could she get from dating the Slytherin older brother of one of her best friends? Honestly? Oh---and one who just happened to be a death eater, a spy for the Order. There was nothing more that anyone could really
say that hadn't already been said.
And, to be honest, she really didn't care. No, no, she was quite happy with this whole snogging-Caradoc Dearborn-freely thing, even if she had no idea how they truly stood. He was supposed to be creating a cover, so the death eaters would believe someone was infiltrating whatever it was that Emmeline seemed to have connections to, but...she did believe him when he said that it wasn't the only reason he wanted to snog her. And be around her. Because of
course he enjoyed being around her. Emmeline grinned against his lips at her own little daydreams, pressing harder into him. It would be horrible to wonder aloud if they could just find a room somewhere, people apparently did it all the time, but her conscience
did come into play, and she settled on the ten more minutes of snogging she was going to allow until they had to head off to the Order house.
His grip on her waist tightened and Emmeline flushed; okay, maybe fifteen minutes.
See, completely working. Caradoc prided himself in the fact that he was able to get her mind on anything else besides--- okay, it wasn't exactly like it was hard. Not in that aspect, but, in--- he was a very good snogger, if he did say so himself. And that was most of he was trying to convey, even though he knew Emmeline already knew that. The point was they were most certainly not going to the Order house any time soon, if he had anything to do with it. This alleyway was just fine.
They stayed there for a while longer, things getting much more interesting--- until Caradoc pulled away from her in a sudden jerk. His grip around her side instantly loosened as a subtle, yet blaring pain began to surge from his left arm. His right arm went to his side as his left eye continued to twitch even as the pain slowly began to subside after a few moments. What the
fuck, honestly? There was no need to pull back his sleeve; he knew the mark there had grown dark. Which meant he had about five minutes to hightail it out of there and turn on his sniveling, I'm not
worthy act that Death Eaters loved to see so much.
Fuck it all----
now?
"Ah," Caradoc mustered, eyes focusing on Emmeline's face as he lifted his right hand to wipe his mouth. This was ridiculous, not to mention completely was unnecessary. What could possibly be that important that had to be addressed at noon? It was Saturday for fuck's sake, nothing ever happened over the weekend.
Emmeline dropped gently back into the wall, breathing heavily as they finally parted. It was almost an unnatural feeling, taking in full, deep breaths, but she supposed it was a necessary break. With the look of the sun in the sky---oy, they had definitely gone past her time restraints, and she automatically felt guilty for it. She hadn't
during the snogging, no, not the snogging that was nearing dangerous territory for public displays of, ah,
affection, but now Emmeline was patting down her hair and clothing to get ready to go to the Order house. As she continued to try and calm her racing heart with slow, steady, breaths, Emmeline watched Caradoc carefully.
"What's wrong?" she asked quietly, tying her hair back up, even though she knew it was going to look far too mussed to pass as normal; she was about to joke that Sirius was going to tear the mickey out of them, but her mind quickly scolded her and now she felt doubly guilty for the time wasted. Her eyes never left his face, searching for an answer; Caradoc would not have stopped so suddenly because of the time, she knew, but she wasn't going to panic or try to initiate things again as they did have somewhere to go. Her hands dropped from her hair and her cheeks puffed gently in concern.
This didn't exactly give him many options. And Caradoc really didn't feel like going into a whole explanation, or even a little one, for that matter, as to what was going on, and what had just happened. It would take too much time, too much effort, and then he would get that
face of hers after it all, which he really didn't want to see either, because then he might stay with her just a bit longer--- not smart. So. He hoped she would just catch on on her own; he was sure she would.
"Nothing," Caradoc said quickly, pulling at his clothes to straighten them out. Not like it really mattered anyway, he had to put another cloak on over this anyway. While doing so, he openly gave a few hard scratches (he--- it
hurt for fuck's sake, it was like that was the only attention he could give it to get it stop) to his left arm. Bloody---
fucking--- he wished he could get his annoyances out about this now, (if this could be called 'letting out'), since he would have to relax and clear his mind in a few minutes anyway, but that seemed rather hard as Emmeline continued to stare at him expectantly. Lovely. This really was a nice surprise treat.
"I have to go," he finished, finally stepping back from her. Right, well this was going to get pretty bad fairly fast. Caradoc let out a short sigh as his legs began to move, but his body didn't go anywhere. He couldn't move quite yet.
Right, that wasn't going to go over well at all. Emmeline's frown deepen and she forced herself not to cross her arms or put her hands on her hips---that was stuff saved for a typical Caradoc situation, not...not what they were now. Things were different when you were...dating. Or, whatever they were doing, so she was going to
attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his agitated manner and gestures was not helping Caradoc's case. Her eyes shot to his arm for a fleeting second, just finding it odd---
"Something more important come up?" she said in a neutral tone, though her eyebrows and expression showed that he better answer right. Emmeline pressed her back against the wall a bit harder, maybe to seem more relaxed, or maybe to give her something to push off of when she got ready to hit him rather hard. If
anything, give her a reasonable lie to believe, a kiss goodbye---oh, look at her. Already making up excuses to make things easier to deal with. She bit the inside of her cheek, fingers crossing each other to keep her fists from clenching at her clothing.
Caradoc bit down on his tongue to stop the already processed answer ready to be shot back at her, because that would not help this situation. Ugh, look at what she was doing to him; he was actually
thinking about what he said to people. And her. Well, she deserved to be treated differently, but that didn't mean----
ugh, he was going to have to tell her, wasn't he? He could see that she was already starting to simmer underneath, and if it was him, he wouldn't deal with something like this laying down either, but this was different. Much different. Although he couldn't exactly be aggravated with her, because she--- ohhh, he hated her, he really did. He did not like what she was doing to him.
"A bit, yes," he drawled, his chin dipping low so his eyes could lock with her. It was a subtle gesture, but explanatory; with his right index finger straight, Caradoc slowly moved to point his finger at his left arm. His face stayed calm and controlled despite the fact that it had been nearly three minutes now. Whether she caught on or not, that was all he was giving her. With a sigh, his hand dropped back to his side and his shoulders proceeded to give a poignant shrug.
Well. He was most certainly not going to leave her here in this dirty alleyway. Stepping to her again, Caradoc wrapped his fingers around her wrist and gently tugged Emmeline off the wall and began to walk with her toward the main street.
Oh.
She followed dumbly after Caradoc, though her mind was whirling so fast she was ready to stumble into him and then make him
late, to---oh. Emmeline put on a very brave front, for the Order, with her friends, but she'd never seen Voldemort close up, only...the one time, on the stage at the peace rally. Where she'd been knocked unconscious and Caradoc got her out of there before she was trampled. Her eyes focused on his back, and a rush of---
something tugged at her chest. He was
always doing something to help her, and going off right now wasn't to be an ass (which she was quite grateful for), but to---she didn't know what. And that was terrifying, but she couldn't
look terrified, because then he'd know and the rest of Hogsmeade would see her begin to panic, and that would just make things worse.
When they reached the main streets, Emmeline wasted no time in turning to kiss him goodbye a bit harder than she should have; mostly because she was worried, but partly to distract him as she swiftly tied the string back around his wrist. Not to be annoying (well, a little bit to be annoying), but he was going to a death eater meeting, those
couldn't be friendly, and Emmeline was going to allow herself to think that a small reminder of her would make whatever it was he was sent to do a little easier. Of course, if she wanted to realistically think about the future of the string, it was definitely going to end up on the floor of some death eater meeting place and...she'd have to kill him.
"See you next month," she muttered, pressing her forehead into his neck for a second before pulling away with a sad smile.
Caradoc felt his body go at ease once she pulled him in close, and even warmer as she lingered near him for a few moments. Despite the fact that every second he stayed here would most likely get him in more trouble than the preceding one, he didn't really care. Well he cared because if you were late, most of the time it hurt, but at the same time-- he didn't, not really. He liked where he was, here, even if it did include Emmeline
still tying that random piece of yarn to him. It felt--- he didn't want to go into it, but it felt good.
He let out a low hum once they finally did part, and both his arms eventually fell to his sides. He should just as well admit defeat (well..."defeat") with this string business, shouldn't he? She was a very determined person, after all, and somehow Caradoc figured that she would not be alright with his such obvious rejection of her gift. Though that didn't mean he didn't have to try taking it off and handing it back to her in her presence, because that certainly would be happening a lot.
"Look at you, you're already falling apart," he teased, leaning in a bit to blow air onto her face. But before she was able to answer, or smack him (more like smack him), Caradoc disappeared with a crack. This had better be good.
