(Untitled)

[clumsy_auror]

"Christ on a sodding bike, Bernard, slow down!"

Nymphadora braces one hand on the dashboard and the other on her husband's arm, her stricken eyes wide and fixedly staring out at the road.

"Knew we should've taken the train. 'It'll be fine, 'Dora, driving's just like falling off a log! You never forget how! It's no big deal!'"

Comments

[the_woodpecker]

"...Yeah, but, baby," Bernard protests, holding the door of the Eagle and Child open for 'Dora and stepping out behind her, "I think it's fair for me to say that my mushy peas are better even though C. S. Lewis sat around and wrote about talking lions here. It's not like he ate these mushy peas."

He pauses, thinking. "Although..."

[clumsy_auror]

"Yours do have butter," concedes Nymphadora, holding out her hand for Bernard to take. "And anything with butter is automatically better, so I think that's a reasonable comparison, yes."

[the_woodpecker]

"Might try that trick with the pepper, though. Clever."

[clumsy_auror]

She smiles, and presses close against him to ward off the evening chill. "Nice place. Very cozy."

[the_woodpecker]

"Mm-hmm," he replies, dropping her hand to slip an arm around her and press a kiss to her temple. They walk slowly, passing darkened store fronts. There's a GAP set in a building that looks older than America.

"Did you ever think you'd have liked to go to Walpurga instead?"

[clumsy_auror]

Nymphadora rubs her nose, reflecting on this. "Not... really, no. I pretty much wanted to be an Auror from around fifth year on. And I did well at Hogwarts, but I was never one to like school for the sake of school. I liked it for where it'd get me later. St. Walpurga's would've been another... what, five years of academia? No thanks."

[the_woodpecker]

"I think it sounds like fun," Bernard shrugs. "Then again, I was blowing shit up and reading Sartre when most people would have said I ought to be at school."

[clumsy_auror]

"Well, but I was never terribly philosophical. You know that. Had to be something I could use right now."

[the_woodpecker]

He nods, pulling her closer. "Me, too, in the end. Had to do something flashy at all times."

But there's that tiny niggle of regret, now and then.

He would have had a blast at school, if he'd been able to settle down and stick to it.

[clumsy_auror]

Her arm settles around Bernard's waist. Nymphadora looks out across the cobblestoned street, at the ancient buildings crammed full of odd little shops. It's a beautiful scene.

Lightly, "As if you needed anymore book learning."

[the_woodpecker]

"I do." They turn a corner onto a quieter side street lined with smaller shops and a few hole in the wall pubs. "Can you imagine me as a literature major?" he laughs.

[clumsy_auror]

"Nnnnnnnoo," she replies, squinting a bit and laughing. "Physics major. Chemistry. The super cool genius all the geeks hate."

[the_woodpecker]

"Yeah, but I'd get failing grades because I'd be too busy nailing the grad students to turn in homework. Just not made for institutional life. High school proved that."

[clumsy_auror]

An acquiescent nod. "Too true, I'm afraid, my love." They pass a tiny shop that almost appears to be leaning, and Nymphadora slows to a stop. Lifts an eyebrow.

"Ah. Think I found the wizarding quarter."

The witch tilts her head to one side, and after a moment the generic druggist's items in the front window morph into a series of potions bottles.

[the_woodpecker]

"...Groovy," Bernard breathes, only sort of seeing it, but only because he knows it's there. "I wonder if there's ever gonna be a time that the border between muggle and wizarding territories won't give me a headache."

[clumsy_auror]

"Probably not, no," 'Dora says apologetically. She tugs him down the short flight of stairs into the barely-there sidestreet beside the apothecary. "Muggles, by nature, should want to turn away at the first feel of the boundary."