Lemming's Instinct (Quen/Dom)

[Billie Ackerman]

  Billie was starting to grow certain she was an idiot. Not like, academically or anything. No, book-wise she was a freaking genius and she knew it. But there was a difference between book-smarts and smart-smarts, and surely no one with a modicum of common sense would be considering what she was about to do.

  Going to visit a vampire. Again. After she’d passed out in mysterious circumstances. And woken up in his bed. And after he’d followed up with a series of odd letters.

  Oh Merlin. What was she getting herself into?

  She’d set up precautions, of course. Public place so nothing weird could happen, and she was visiting the main shops first so she could bail early on if she needed to. Hell, she owed the guy a chance to explain, right?

  Or maybe she was totally freaking out over nothing and it was all in her head.

  Still, doubts were numerous and ever-present as she prepared to leave the castle. Subtlety was not Billie’s strong point, so the fact she’d managed to get into the Ravenclaw Common Room to get dressed and sneak off without alerting half the castle was a near miracle. Being in a separate dorm to the rest of her friends had some advantage.

  After a small fiasco with a missing purple jacket (you couldn’t expect her to dress subtle too) and she was ready to go. Sneaking out was easy, way easier than it should be, and Billie was starting to wonder if it was just so easy because Murphy’s Law dictated someone was watching her leave and was going to flee to McGonagall or something.

  Okay, now she was just getting paranoid.

  After she slipped out of the castle it was just her on the freezing lone path towards the village. Blasted cold. Billie pulled her jacket around her more firmly, cursing the fact she’d only picked jeans instead of layering two pairs of trousers on top of each-other. (Hey, it worked, okay?!)

 ... But hey, at the very least Dom would have no trouble seeing her arrive.

[Quentin Reuben Flack]

Watching Kale put the Slytherins through their paces in Quidditch practice was all very good in theory, but reality was a very different story. In reality Quen had realised rather belatedly that he wasn’t that big a fan of watching people zooming around in the distance, catching balls and trying to knock each other off their brooms. Not to mention sitting around outside in February, even wrapped up as he was in a thick winter coat, scarf and gloves, was starting to get incredibly cold.

Quen quickly grew tired of sitting on the stands, having to squint to even see the players in the rapidly fading light and resort to using the warming charm he’d learnt in class to stop his ears from going numb. So, once he was fairly certain Kale was distracted by showing the chasers how to dive for the quaffle, he slipped away, heading in the direction of the castle with every intention of returning to the common room. It would be warm there and he’d been meaning to read Rita Skeeter’s biography of Harry Potter, which might not be based on facts, but was far more interesting than the dry account of his life in the History of Magic textbook.

Then he spotted Billie leaving the school and decided that, since he was already dressed for the outdoors, he might as well follow her. It was practically his duty as a fellow student to make sure she was safe, especially after the attacks that had gone on recently. Besides Billie only ever wore that purple coat when she wanted to look nice (it worked) and whatever was going on that was making her leave the castle dressed like that was worth finding out about.

They were about half way down the path to Hogsmeade when Quen finally caught up to her, his ears red from the cold and slightly out of breath from jogging to reach her. ”Billie!” He called, using his slightly longer stride to close the last few metres between them and walk alongside her. ”Sneaking out of the castle at night! What would the teachers say?” Quen’s grin was clear to see even in the dim light of the early evening.

[Billie Ackerman]

[atrb=width,450,true][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss229/Ehetere/PostTags/BillieFlowersBG-1.png,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/1300666/Characters/Billie/BillieFlowers_02.png][atrb=style,padding:0px 60px;background-position:top;background-repeat:no-repeat;]   Well, snap. And for a minute there Billie actually thought she might have gotten away with it too. She was halfway down the path and the village was in sight. The end goal was there, but for some reason her pace subconsciously slowed down. Nerves? Who knew.   “Billie!”   The voice sounded almost painfully loud. The girl pretty much jumped, shying to a halt and resisting the urge to sprint. It’s not like she really needed to look any guiltier.   She turned her head to look, a distinctly caught-red-handed expression on her features. The voice was one she’d recognise anywhere; Quentin Flack, in one of the rare occasions he wasn’t followed by his asinine lackey Kale Greengrass and his gargantuan ears. And thank God for that, without him Quen could actually be halfway decent to talk to without making anyone want to kick kittens.   He finally caught up and Billie resumed her progress towards the village. She was vehemently telling herself that she didn’t need any company, although the fact she was breathing a little easier was somewhat undermining her argument. At least bickering with Quen was something she was familiar with.   “Hey, when has that ever stopped you?” she argued back, trying to muster her best go-away tone of voice and not-quite managing it. “Thought I’d take a leaf out of your book. It seems to be working for you so far.”

[Quentin Reuben Flack]

Billie stopped and waited for him, looking awfully guilty in the process, which only made Quen all the more curious about why she was sneaking out of the castle on a Saturday night. It wasn’t like she was a stickler for the rules, in fact he’d say Billie was as likely to break the school rules as the next student (unless the next student was him or Kale perhaps). So it wasn’t like he was shocked to find her leaving the school, but Billie never did anything without a good reason and he was just dying to find out what that reason was.

”Not everybody is blessed with my good looks and charming personality,” He said, managing to look almost as pompous as he sounded and completely ignoring the prompt in her tone to go away and let her get on with her rule breaking in peace. ”Could you give detention to a face like this?” Quen fluttered his eyelashes for effect, falling a long way short of the kind of innocent, endearing expression that would soften the hardened resolve of a teacher and instead ending up somewhere in the realm of the ridiculous. Besides both of them were well aware that he landed himself in detention more often than not.

The point of the exercise hadn’t been to brag anyway (okay, maybe it had been a little bit about bragging). It had been designed to put Billie at ease because it was kind of hard to miss how she was being all jumpy and, well… Weird. Definitely not like her usual self at all. And if Quen had somehow managed to miss the way she’d jumped about a mile when he’d called her name, he definitely hadn’t missed the way she’d failed to assault his ears with her usual diatribe of endless rambling.

”So, what has you walking down the path towards a life of crime?” He asked, gesturing at the path in front of them as though it was literally leading them straight into the criminal underworld rather than a sleepy little village in Scotland. Quen knew well enough that given the right prompts and enough time he could get Billie to spill about what she was doing just by letting her run her mouth off, but they were almost at Hogsmeade so asking her directly was probably easier and more efficient.

[Billie Ackerman]

[atrb=width,450,true][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss229/Ehetere/PostTags/BillieFlowersBG-1.png,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/1300666/Characters/Billie/BillieFlowers_02.png][atrb=style,padding:0px 60px;background-position:top;background-repeat:no-repeat;]   Billie laughed at Quen’s assertion that he was too cute to be given detention to. “Yeah right, I so could,” she replied, her voice slowly regaining its usual volume. “And so could Connery with that time with the frogs, and the books, and poor Millie, and that time you jinxed Paul by ‘accident’ in prac. And Longbottom at the start of last week and that thing with the Venemous Tentacula and like that stunt with mixing the dirt with the dragon dung. That was you that Grey was yelling at in the hall wasn’t it? Something with the suits of armour? So that’s number... I’ve lost count, but it still counts. And Discroll with the crystal balls but that was weird because he seems more relived that a few got wrecked if anything else, but he’s always been weird so I guess he doesn’t count. Anyway, yeah, you’ve pretty much run afoul of everyone at least once.”   Well, shit. So much for shooing him off. Then again, it wasn’t like she was going to get rid of Quen anyway until some of his curiosity had been appeased. She could humour him on the way down then try and shed him again.   Billie shoved her hands into her pockets in an attempt to warm them, keeping an eye on the path for the presence of any rocks or mysterious roots that Quen might find funny to raise. Not that there should be roots in the middle of a path, but still.   There were three things she could tell him. First there was a lie, which was totally not happening because Billie was useless at making things up on the spot. Two, there was the truth, which was also not happening because he’d mock her forever. Third, there was the infamous half-truth... where he’d STILL mock her forever but it was still better than the actual truth-truth, which she’d been repeating herself a hundred times over and still couldn’t make it sound any more sane.   “I was going to Dervish, okay? My quill ran out in class and I have no more ink and I can’t borrow anyone else’s because all they have left is that crazy novelty stuff and I think I’d get killed if I turned up to Connery’s class with an essay where the words change themselves around to sound rude–” Billie took a deep breath, “–and I couldn’t go tomorrow because I have this stuff due for Professor Bell and I don’t like leaving things for the last minute so I figured I could duck down tonight and then work on it for a few hours until I fall over then finish it in the morning so I could have the rest of the Sunday to do something like harass Jo about Quidditch–” more air ”–because I don’t like it when I have work that’s still owed.” Okay, run on sentence much. “Sooo, yeah.”

[Quentin Reuben Flack]

And just like that Billie was back to her normal self, which meant talking at a mile a minute with no apparent need to stop for breath. It seemed nothing could faze her for long and Quen snorted as she began to recite all the recent times that he’d gotten himself detention. ”Okay, okay!” He protested half-heartedly, nudging her playfully with an elbow ”Point made. For the record that thing with the suits of armour was a misunderstanding! Grey was just pissy because one of them fell on a Hufflepuff.”

The banter about his trouble-making was just a hopefully brief, but with Billie you never knew, interlude before they got to the reason Billie was sneaking out of the castle on a school night. Quen sneaked a sidelong glance at her, his face lit up with curiosity, but her gaze was fixed on the ground, a thoughtful expression on her face. He wasn’t used to having to wait for an answer, especially not with Billie, who was usually the first to start talking and the last to stop.

Quen had to laugh at what Billie said next, a couple of peals escaping from between his lips before he managed to stifle them into another half-snort. ”You’re such a Granger, Billie.” He teased, ignoring the fact that he’d already been to the library that afternoon to get out a couple of books for the assignment Professor Bell had set them. He very nearly got distracted by asking her what she was planning to base her essay on, but the potential to embarrass her was too great to ignore.

A mischievous grin slipped onto his face. ”I bet you could have found somebody with ink. I definitely have some. You’re not really out for ink are you? You’re sneaking out for a hot date!” He crowed, straying dangerously close to the real truth without realising it, then shooting way past it and off in completely the wrong direction. ”It’s the Dervish shopkeeper isn’t it? What a silver fox. I didn’t know you went for guys with grey hair.”

[Billie Ackerman]

[atrb=width,450,true][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss229/Ehetere/PostTags/BillieFlowersBG-1.png,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/1300666/Characters/Billie/BillieFlowers_02.png][atrb=style,padding:0px 60px;background-position:top;background-repeat:no-repeat;]   Billie was just about to shoot back an ‘I am not!’ to being called a Granger before she realised that Quen might actually be giving her a compliment. A rather backhanded one, but a compliment none the less. Granger may have been a total nerd, but she was still one of the most capable witches in England.   ... Damnit. Now she was confused.   She opened her mouth as though to answer, but was saved from having to think of a response by Quen changing the subject.   In completely the wrong direction.   Hot date? ... Shit. Billie’s expression suddenly went rigid, her mouth dropping open a little. How did Quen kno—he couldn’t. There was no way. But argh! The little git probably knew how to get gossip from anywhere. Billie had never been so grateful for the dark – her face had just done a stunning approximation of the colour of a beetroot.   “It’s the Dervish shopkeeper isn’t it? What a silver fox. I didn’t know you went for guys with grey hair.”   She blinked.   ... Ohthankmerlin!   “You knob!” she yelled amusedly before trying to playfully elbow Quen in the ribs with a laugh that may have sounded slightly hysterical.   God that was a narrow save.   “Yeah, you got me, I’m big into wrinkles,” she replied sarcastically, feeling herself start to recover. One thing was for sure now: Quen wasn’t allowed to come. If he knew she was going out to see a guy – with fangs no less – she was never going to hear the end of it. Ever.   “And what about you? I don’t think you’re just randomly here to chaperon my hot date with the shop-keeper – whose name I don’t even think I know by the way, I think it’s Greg something cause I’m not THAT much of a geek. But if you were terrorising the first years, at least tell me they were the runty ones.”