Goodnight [open]

[devin pucket]

She turned quickly when he spoke and blinked. Moving to the other side of her desk she let him take her hand and looked up at him as he pressed the cloth against her hand. Her cheeks flushed little and she smiled. He was very nice for someone she barely knew. Honestly she was aware that she was not the only person in the world that spoke French. She was simply used to being the only one that ever heard herself speak the language and was not accustomed to being answered. The cut stung and it quickly stained his handkerchief with blood. Devin was a bleeder, she had been since she was little.

"Je suis désolé....ermm.. Merci. Vous êtes très doux." Her eyes flicked from her hand to his face then back down again. Her hand was a lot smaller than his. Were her hands that small compared to everyone's hands? Blinking a moment she looked back at him. "Vous parlez français aussi?" Devin watched his face as he dabbed at her wound and smiled at him. With her free hand she turned to her desk and flicked her wand at the few drops on the surface. They lifted themselves up and she guided them into a little vial on the table by the cabinet. The blood of a witch is very good to have for potion making... but it either required cutting yourself open or cutting someone else open and the opportunity to collect didn't come around very often as no one wanted to be cut open.

An awkward quiet fell on them as she watched his face. He was so manly and actually he was really rather attractive. Placing her wand back on the desk, she pushed her hair out of her face and peeked a little under the handkerchief. A little blood still peeked from the slice and she shuddered and looked away. Devin didn't do blood well. Not her own anyway. It was creepy to her how warm it was and just.. bleh. She hated even thinking about it, and now it was stuck in her head.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Dimitri smiled back, thankfully managing not to blush (though he did feel a little silly). He knew they barely knew each other, but he just tried to be kind - at all times. Kindness was the easiest way to acceptance and if there was anything Dimitri secretly craved..
"Il n'y a pas de quoi," he assured her. "C'était le moins que je pouvais faire pour toi." He knew his French was in a bad state, it had been ages since he'd actively spoken it. The only times when he encountered French these days was when researching French books on the Dark Arts for the Order.

"Simplement un peu," he said with a slight shrug. "Ma mère était- ah- est française," Dimitri added with a slight stammer. Typical that his mother was still alive, but that he always referred to her in the past tense. "Elle a eu l'habitude de parler français à la maison." Again, past tense happened before he could stop it. Dimitri shrugged a little. It didn't matter.
"How's your hand?" he asked, switching back to English just as easily, though the first few words were a little heavier in accent than usual. Switching languages, after all those years it was still a bother. He had no idea what Devin was thinking, which was probably just as well or he might get even more shy. He barely knew her, after all, and he simply doesn't move fast like that. Sure, he thought Devin was nice and good-looking, but he didn't persue such thoughts.

[devin pucket]

She fell quiet for a long time as she returned to her papers. She always felt weird when people talked about moms. She didn't even know what moms were supposed to be like. She grew up with out one and never had any "yeah my mom is totally the same way and/or does something very similar and/or equally funny" stories. Just the one story. The "My mom died the day I was born so I don't remember her" story. So typically if someone talked about their mom Devin changed the subject and tried to ignore that bad things happen more often than she would like to admit.

"My dad thought it was culturally correct to have me learn another language. He also thought the tutor was attractive." She blushed a little and looked down at a few of the pages, gingerly moving them around. He asked about her hand which she thought was cute. He really didn't have to bother over her, they barely knew each other. "Oh... its fine... Only stings a little." She smiled at him and let her green eyes trace his face once before looking down to her tea.

She was lost in thought for a moment before looking up at him. "What do your tea leaves say?? I've got.... A... Sun? With a cross....And the letter.... E? So..." She squinted at her little cup and made a face. "So.. Trials and suffering.....with great happiness.... I was never very good at this." She laughed and peeked over to his cup.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Dimitri, bless him, never noticed her awkward reaction to the mention of his mother. He was just glad she didn't really ask more about it and that thought occupied him so wholly that he never saw the flash in her eyes or heard the silence that followed. He was going to feel bad about this when he found out. Hm.
"Nothing wrong with learning languages, I suppose.." he quietly agreed. There had been a time when he'd been trying his hand at Italian, but that knowledge had sunk below the surface now. He couldn't remember a single word apart from 'gelato', which was Italian for 'ice cream'. Dimitri didn't even like ice cream.
He wasn't sure how to respond to Devin's father finding her French tutor attractive and so he clumsily chose to gloss over and ignore it. After all, what should he say to that? 'Oh, yes, French speaking women can sure be charming'? No, not good (and, also, a lie). Besides.. did that mean Devin's parents had divorced or had there been some kind of affair when they were still together and had Devin known but not said? Or maybe something else? The options were numerous and highly unpleasant. Dimitri didn't want to know and Devin didn't seem eager to talk about it. Ignoring it was probably the best option.

"Oh, good," he muttered a little clumsily when she said her hand was alright, and glanced back at the papers. He'd forgotten he was supposed to be sorting them and went back to work.
For a moment, there was just silence.
And then Devin started talking about tea leaves. "Tea leaves?" Dimitri wasn't familiar with the divination method of tea leaves. He'd never had divination in school and, honestly, hadn't bothered to ever pursue the knowledge at any point in his life. He wasn't sure if he believed in it or not, all he knew was that he just didn't want to know. He glanced at her cup, then at his. "Oh, tea leaves. Sorry, I never had- My school didn't exactly do divination." He flashed her a brief smile and handed her his cup. "You read mine." Truthfully? To Dimitri, tea leaves at the bottom of his cup simply meant he was out of tea and wanted another cup - that was the only true bit of information that could be deduced from it.

[devin pucket]

Devin wasn't one to really believe in divination. Not with tea leaves as vague as "Trials and suffering ending in great happiness." Didn't every good story go that way? But she always looked at them. She may have mixed up the symbols every once in a while (splotchy soaked tea leaves often looked different to different people), but she always looked and tried to guess. Squinting into his cup she tilted her head sideways and tried to find something that looked familiar. Making a little thinking sort of sound she took the cup in her hands and held it close. Glancing up over the rim at him she smiled. He was really very handsome. She had gotten terribly lucky to run into someone that wasn't much older than she was or smelled like eye of newt. She gagged a little at that thought and shook her head.

The inside of his cup had turned out to be rather depressing and she let out a sigh. On the bright side she didn't think it was quite the grim. Blinking a few times she swallowed then lowered the cup again. "Now.... As I said.. I'm really not that good at this." An interesting concept considering Devin tried to be amazing at everything and when she wasn't she didn't often go around letting it be known. So it was actually very silly that she happened to bring up the subject at all. "It looks sort of like... A Falcon... and a scull...." She looked up at him and searched her new acquaintance's face.

" Oh... umm.... The Falcon I think means.. A deadly enemy. And the scull represents danger in your path and since its near the handle it...Well. I think it means it will be sooner rather than later. There are three little triangles over here... I don't know what that means.. and a D... which could just be you... She swallowed a little as she set his cup back down and turned to her papers again. That wasn't exactly how she wanted that to go. Why couldn't she have seen like.. a whale or something for... Travel? She had no idea. Now not only was her future foggy but her brain seemed to be a little clouded as well.

Sifting the last few papers around she ran her tongue across her teeth and sighed then looked through what he had and let her shoulders fall a little. "Half of the year six papers are missing and I think a few first year papers. She'd be up all damn night searching the stair cases for all the missing assignments. This night was going terribly. She wished she could just go to bed and wake up at the end of the year in time to go home. But that was not at all practical. And Devin loved practicality.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

Dimitri had been raised an orthodox Russian and had, ever since, pretty much held a dislike for anything 'spiritual'. That included things like divination. The idea that a future could be predicted seemed preposterous to him, because in Dimitri's eyes the future was something in flux and also something you had a fair amount of power over. Gods and divination implied a dependence and helplessness that he didn't like much at all.
Playing a guessing game was an amusing way to pass the time, though - even though he didn't at all believe whatever his former drink had to tell him.
He smiled back at Devin, then raised an eyebrow at her as she sighed. "That bad, huh?" he laughed a little. He wasn't too bothered and didn't see why she should be, either. It was all fantasy anyway. "You'll still be better at it than I am," he assured her with a lopsided smile. "No backing out now, you actually made me curious."

He leant forward a little, over the table, to glance at the bottom of his cup. To him, the falcon looked like an upside down book - but what did he know, right? Devin seemed highly uncomfortable, so Dimitri moved back to his chair and smiled at her. "Sounds plausible enough - time will tell, right?" he brushed it off a little and picked up his cup to look at the vague shapes again. "I suppose it's safe to say we've all got mortal enemies closing in at this point, right?" His tone obviously illustrated exactly how non-worried he was about the whole thing. He was a member of the Order - of course he had mortal enemies and of course there was going to be trouble soon. Nothing he couldn't handle, though, or so he thought.

And then he suddenly realised again that they weren't here for tea leaves and conversation. The papers, of course. "Sixth years and first years?" he echoed, getting up. "You sort out the rest and I'll go find them?" After all, she was probably better off sorting - it was her system and all that. That and Dimitri wasn't all that comfortable sending her on a mission in the dark on a set of moving staircases.
"I was supposed to be doing rounds anyway - two birds with one stone, you know?" he said matter-of-factly and smiled a bit. He didn't particularly want to go, because he thought Devin was good company, but she looked tired and should probably go to bed. His patrolling duties wouldn't be over for the next few hours anyway, he might as well make good use of that time.

[devin pucket]

Wow. She'd done really well to make a fabulous first impression. Tea leaves? What the hell was she thinking? Uggg she was so dumb. She needed to turn this back around. "It was really nice of you to help me." She stood up with him and smiled pushing back her hair and blushing little. "I really hope its not going to be too much trouble to do all that running around just for my clumsiness."

She really wanted to see him again and needed a good excuse. She was searching her brain for something, anything. "Um.. I don't need those right away so if you don't want to run all the way back up here again you can hang onto them." Sure.. that.. no that sucked! Devin was cursing at herself inside. Breathing once she made an awkward sort of look then shook it away. Gosh she was just terrible at this. There had to be something in that pretty head of hers. Other than sudden dreamy little images of her college, who was, in her opinion, very hansom.

"How about we meet up for lunch tomorrow and you can bring them along? We could meet up....back here then head down for some lunch???" That sounded really date like. She was really not going to be surprised if he turned her down. Brushing her hair back she moved to the door and opened it for him and smiled. Not that she wanted him to go she was rather enjoying staring at him talking to him. But she really did need those papers eventually.

[Dimitri Mikhail Zolnerowich]

As far as first impressions went, Dimitri was pretty sure that bumping into someone and nearly killing them by making them bounce down a flight of stairs was worse than reading someone's tea leaves and admitting to not be very good at it.
"Oh, it was partly my fault that you lost everything," he said. "And I prefer this over doing rounds any time." True, because Dimitri didn't like having to reprimand students. He understood that it was necessary to make sure there were no students out of bed, for the teenagers' own safety and all that (now most of all), but he just didn't like it. He preferred not being the 'bad teacher', so to speak. "No problem at all."

"Oh, yes, uhm-" Dimitri smiled and nodded. "I'll drop them off later. Wouldn't want to wake you or anything." By the time he was done doing his rounds, she'd be long asleep (hopefully, anyway). He definitely didn't mind meeting up with her later.
"Lunch sounds good, yes, I have, eh- class until eleven, I think. Yes, eleven." Dimitri smiled. "I'll meet you here after?" He expected she meant just lunch in the Great Hall, not in Hogsmeade or something? He had more classes directly after lunch.
He didn't really realise she'd opened the door until he snapped out of his thoughts. Oh, right, he was supposed to be going. Dimitri got to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow then."