Basilisk (Dark Ominis Gaunt x OC gothic romance)

Chapter 120: Creeping In

~~Ariadne~~

Things had started to settle in the house quite nicely, really. Ominis worked on his investments in his study, Damien tinkered around the house while Marie cleaned. She rather enjoyed the little passing glances those two had started sharing, as well. It made her almost giddy every time she saw her sister blush when Damien did something, or the way she stared when he lifted an object.

Veela was still out of sorts, talking very little with Sebastian, much to his dismay. He tried again and again to talk to her, but she seemed hesitant, as if afraid to open herself again. Considering what Sebastian had done she couldn't really blame her, but... seeing the lovesick look on Sebastian, the way he sometimes stared off at nothing in thought made her rather sad.

She was thinking of all this while walking toward the library, though stopped curiously when Damien was looking down at a floorboard he'd raised off the floor.

"Is anything wrong?" Ariadne asked, seeing his confused expression.

"Does Ominis know if this house has a stone foundation or not? Or a crawl space?" He was peering in the space below where the floorboard has been.

"I'm not sure but I can ask..." she leaned over his shoulder to see what he was seeing and her brows furrowed in confusion. Was that... ivy? Below the house? "How is it growing with no light?" She asked aloud.

"I have no idea." Damien shook his head. "But I figure it's probably just a little vine creeping through the ground to find light again. Probably not a big deal." He shrugged.

"Yeah, you're probably right." She said, feeling as if that was probably the explanation. Ivy was a creeping vine, after all.

"I'll clear this out and this board shouldn't squeak anymore." Damien said, ripping out the Ivy quickly. He paused and... wait was he sniffing it? She rose a brow as he definitely was smelling the Ivy for some reason.

"Does... it smell good or something?" She asked skeptically.

"Huh? OH- uh, no. It smells..." he sniffed it again before he frowned. "I thought I smelled something on it but, I don't anymore. So it's probably just my imagination."

"What do you think you smelled?" She tilted her head. His sense of smell was much better than usual.

"Magic- dark magic, specifically." He said solemnly. "But that's probably just me being paranoid. I highly doubt some ivy has dark magic in it." He laughed, setting the ripped up vine aside before replacing the floor board and starting to tack it back in.

She looked at the ivy thoughtfully. "Would you be willing to let me have it?"

He looked up to her in surprise. "Yeah, of course. I was just going to throw it away." He offered her the vine.

"Thank you." She took it and inspected it closely, humming softly. "I'm going to have a closer look. Thank you for all your work fixing up the place, Damien." She said, already starting to walk off as she spoke.

"No problem." Damien said in a tone that said he thought it was strange she was so interested in the vine suddenly before he shrugged and went back to work.

She walked into the library and took her wand out from her dress, using lumos to inspect it better, noticing small thorns along the stem of the vine. That was odd... ivy didn't usually have thorns.. did it?

She went over to one bookshelf and read through the titles before humming when she found the one she wanted, taking out the herbology book and starting to flip through the pages of Ivy, comparing the one she had to the different illustrations.