The Badger And The Snake; Phan/Harry Potter AU

Nineteen: Poems And Picnics.

"Hey, let's skip school," yawned Dan around 3am. "I'm not tired," he said, rubbing his eyes and stretching.

"Neither am I," said Phil, smiling. "And sounds like a plan."

They spent the wee hours of the morning playing 21 questions, inquiring about things they already knew about the other.

"What's your favorite color."

"Phil," Dan said, rolling his eyes. "I've known you for four years."

"I'm your favorite color?" He giggled.

"Phil," he said, stressing the I.

"What's your favorite . . . word?"

"Hm. That's weird. I guess blasphemy. It's a pretty word. I mean, I guess if you forget about the meaning and just focus on the word itself, then it's a pretty word. Or condescending. Condescending just sounds like cotton candy."

"You like insulting words, huh."

"Yeah."

"Mine is emotion. It sounds like ten things at once. Joy and sadness and love and anger and offense and adventure and thoughtfulness and fear and hurt and happiness and pain and it really captures the meaning of the thing. Emotion is a good word."

"I love you and the way you explain things."

Phil blushed.

"I'm rambling about emotion and you profess your love, for both my aforementioned rambling and I."

"It honestly couldn't be less appropriate," he said. He was lying on his back, covering his eyes with his left forearm. Phil was sitting at his feet, cross legged, Indian-style.

"What's your favorite color? Oh wait no I asked that already. Uh. What's your favorite Muggle poem?" Asked Phil. He was especially interested in Muggle culture and asked Dan about it whenever possible or relevant.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth."

As Dan suddenly began to recite a poem unknown to Phil, seemingly from memory - unless he has the words written on his forearm, I guess, thought Phil - he listened intently and leaned forward.

"Then took the other, just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."