Ten years after I began at Hogwarts, Sebastian Sallow is back. And he's Professor Sallow now. He disappeared after the fall of Ranrok and Rookwood, after I lost Professor Fig, and after Ominis and I couldn't keep him from losing himself. But I never...
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What did she just say?
::Fuck, mate, she's diving right into it.::
If there is such a thing as a spit-free spit take, it's exactly what I do. I feel my eyes going wide and my face flushing like a bloody schoolboy, and I can't help but laugh with my whole belly as she cackles wickedly.
April laughs with me and gives me a mischievous look that could make me bend to her every whim.
"What?! Is that not your question?" she asks, leaning in and saying under her breath "I mean, what could be more embarrassing?" How does she still know how to push all the right buttons? I can't stop laughing. I can't remember the last time I laughed like this. It hasn't been since...
Since her.
::Miserable sod.::
Mortified, I scramble to clarify through catching breaths "No. NO!" I put my hands up, gesturing 'NO' emphatically through my laughter. "I'll have you know that is definitively not what I was going to ask."
"Suuuure you weren't," she jokes, and winks at me.
Merlin, please believe me, April, I'm not a sociopath.
::Aren't you, though?::
"I wasn't!! No, I felt embarrassed about the fact that – I don't know – that I lingered at all. Like some creeper. I was going to ask about your magic. It's been so–."
"Yeaahhh" she cuts me off, skeptically, "pretty sure you were just embarrassed to ask if I was fucking a centaur."
"Would you stop saying that?!" I beg through a terribly unflattering giggle.
I probably look like a bloody fool.
::No, you definitely look like a bloody fool.::
She grins more widely with every rise she gets out of me and it makes me hungry for her.
::Throw her to the ground and show her what it means to get a rise out of you.::
I sip in a breath to calm my nerves.
"I'm gonna go ahead and get this over with," she says.
::Told you, lad. They're fucking. Blow that dirty beast away.::
"The short answer is NO. Abso--LUTELY not."
I see her gear up for another punchline and I brace myself.
"I mean, the logistics alone..."
The way she says it has me splitting again, and I hate to admit I feel a certain amount of relief. Not that I actually thought...not that it's any of my business...
::You wondered, though, you git.::
And through my breath I try to say as much, "I–I–wasn't even–going to ask–about–"
