Lumos/Nox

Prélude

The sunlight shining too bright on his skin was making his eyelids burn, but Dan ignored it. He rolled over in the grass until it was the back of his sky blue t-shirt that was being bathed in the radiance and his nose being tickled with the musty smell of soil. With a voice muffled by the dirt, he shouted out, "Eve! C'mere! I want to show something to you." 

She came bounding over in her pink-and-purple flowered sundress, brown curls dancing in little ringlets. "What is it this time, Daniel?" Her arms were crossed, but a big grin was stretched across her face. She was nearly jumping off her sandal-clad toes with excitement. 

Earlier, he'd grown a single daisy from the ground for her crown because she'd been missing only one more. Now, he was feeling a little less generous and angelic. Eve didn't notice the mischievous glint in his eyes as he pressed a pointer finger into the little clearing of grass, until his first knuckle was sunk a centimeter down in the dirt. A few seconds later, a loud chirring sounded from near his finger, and he lifted it out of the soil, a cicada clinging to it with little hooked feet digging into Dan's skin. Its abdomen waggled up and down as the noise resounded. 

Chirrr chirr chirr...

"You silly little creature – you're out of the ground five years early! There aren't any mates for you out here. Look, Eve! Isn't he beautiful?" Dan quickly rolled over and stood up, shoving his finger under Eve's nose. Truly, the iridescent green sheen of the cicada's transparent wings and the shininess of its head and eyes were something to behold, but Eve was hardly aware of it. She screamed and ran until she could no longer imagine the insect creeping into her dress from behind. 

"Daniel James Howell! How could you? You're the most despicable person in this whole world. I hate you! You're terrible!" She stomped her little foot on the ground, eyebrows furrowed in anger. Then, just as quickly as hail in the summer arrives and passes without a warning, she was smiling again. 

"I regret telling you my middle name, you know. It just feels like you're my mother, now," Dan muttered.

Eve ignored this. Still grinning, she asked, "But Dan, if Henry doesn't have a mate, what will he do? Will he die alone? It's not fair to bring a living thing out of the soil too early for its time, all alone. You should get a girl so they can be together and have babies." She risked a few steps closer, so she could better examine the newly christened Henry. Henry's multi-faceted eyes shifted to take her image in, and she waved. "Please, Dan? Henry deserves a wife."

Dan sighed. The cicada seemed to look up at him, confused. "I suppose you're right. But you have to hold this Henry while I get him a Henrietta, alright?" Nodding enthusiastically, Eve accepted the pinching hold of the lonely insect as Dan returned to the soil beneath the tree to raise a cicada lover. 

The chirr chirr began again, and soon, Henrietta was born. The lovely couple seemed happy enough to flirt with each other, so Dan and Eve placed them together on a branch of the tree and left them be. After all, they couldn't have babies if they weren't in private.

Catching a glimpse of the setting sun, Dan gathered his jacket from the meadow grass and stood to go home. "Eve, it's getting late. I have to go. My dad's waiting for me, probably. I think we're having spaghetti tonight. Walk home with me?"

Eve smiled at him and grabbed his hand, holding it tightly in hers. They were about the same size. "You dummy, we live on the same street. Of course I'll walk home with you. Do you know we'll be ten years old next year, though?"

The sudden change of subject was a normal thing for the two friends, and Dan nodded, swinging their connected hands back and forth between them. "Yeah. The double digits."

"But don't you know what else that means? You get to go to the magical school when you're eleven. That means we're only two years away now. My mum said that when she went to the magic school, she was eleven. Her dad went when he was eleven, too. Dan, aren't you excited?"

 She squeezed his hand slightly harder than painless would have been, but he stifled the gasp. Instead, he answered, "Of course, I can't wait! But I know you say I'll go to the magic school, too, and I believe you about it being real, but my parents aren't magical. Both of them are normal people. At least your mum is magical. Why would I be able to go to Hogwarts?"

"You dummy!" She nudged him hard with her shoulder. "You can do magical things, can't you? Henry and Henrietta wouldn't be having such an early baby-making start if it weren't for you, and the daisy crown sitting on my dresser wouldn't be complete if it weren't for your magic. Of course you'll go to Hogwarts! We'll go together!"

"I can't wait, Eve. Let's go together."

They'd gone past the edges of the grassy fields, and now the street lamps of the neighbourhood were coming into view. Voices rolled out of open windows, shouting about dinner and wine and babies, and the occasional crash of broken porcelain jutted out amid the faint din. Most outstanding in the mix was the vibrating frequency of a single male cicada, purring for nature's call. 

Chirrrr...

More to come, I swear. Anyway, this entire story is dedicated to human_tomato who totally peer pressured me into writing this, but it's alright. I've never written Phan AU before, and I aspire towards yours, especially that certain one with the wildly kinkbait title.