set at the end of seventh year, when the seventh years go off on a trip together. based around 'short country song' by emmy the great. (and when the day is without purpose, i'm a place to put your hands, and you're so lazy when you're shirtless, but i s'pose i could do worse than be with you. twice before the morning, you wake me with the thought that there's a part of you that's frozen and you want to make it warmer. well my darling keep your coat on, it's only how the night will make you feel. come and let me show you that it's real.) - Neither of them can remember how the summer started. It's likely that neither of them will really remember where it finished, either. The alcohol and the music and the laughter have that effect, as if reality is being dimmed. (Of course, they both welcome that. Reality had never been very kind to either of them.) They can remember the last month of term. The suggestion of one final bang for the seventh years. The last chance to go all out. Between the exams and the packing and the organizing and the goodbyes and the tears, (because it was Hogwarts and it was home and it was gone) the seventh years had somehow found themselves preparing for the big wide world by getting drunk and travelling somewhere towards the horizon. Nobody can remember how they got there, but they're outstretched on the rocky beach long tegs tangled up in towels, bare skin tickled by sand. Dale Lyons is organizing the bonfire, Dominique Weasley is splashing in the waves with a deliciously charming muggle boy, Rosie Weasley is beating everybody at volleyball because she's the only person who understands the rules (and her Quidditch skills help). Della Richmond is lying on her back, sunglasses over her eyes, book dog-eared and sitting forgotten beside her. Robert Nott is sitting only a few towels away, admiring the work that Lyons and his team have done on the bonfire. "Stupid alpha males," Della calls over sleepily, laughing as she rolls on her side to watch them. Albus Potter bows, happy to take his title, before rearranging a few more sticks. "Not joining them, Robbie?' teases Della, trying to make her voice sound normal, but unable to hide the fact that she had been drifting off in the four o' clock sun. The corners of his lips twitch upwards - just a fraction. (He hopes that behind her sunglasses, she doesn't see it.) "No. However, I'm also not lying around snoring. Thankfully." "Oi!" comes the response, but whether it's the heat or the laughter or the sand between her toes, she finds herself laughing instead of wanting to slap him. (Robert Nott making her laugh - that's another thing that she can't remember starting.) "Do I really snore, though?" she questions, crumpling up her face in disgust. He taps his nose in a 'not telling' sort of way and she shakes her head, faking an exasperated sigh, but smiling. From behind her shades she watched as he gets up and joins to macho man area surrounding the bonfire. A smile creeps onto her lips as she shakes her head and rolls over onto her side, watching the volleyball game but listening to the 'bro banter' behind her. - They soon discover that it's impossible not the be somewhat happy. (A discovery followed by mass alcohol consumption - they both can't quite believe that happiness like that can be acheived so easily, and get drunk so they have something to blame it on.) Partly it was because (as Fred Weasly had shouted on the last day of school:) they were 'fucking grown-ups now'. Freedom. Possibilites. The future. And they no longer had to sit and study and wait and go home to people who pretended to care. Partly because now that they had outgrown their proper home, they could both escape the makeshift ones from. And also because it was summer and it was hot and sticky and sandy and everybody was drinking too much and nobody was wearing that much and they had no responsibilites. They could just... be. As the afternoon's blue sky decayed to a bruised pink purple and the sunlight was replaced with the bonfire's sparks, casting shadows that danced across their faces, the stories and the jokes and the snogging and the laughter is like a disease. They try to fight it, but it is too infectious; catching, spreading. - When night falls, nobody sleeps, but as the hours drag on it pulls them all down and sitting turns to lying down and lying down quickly turns to slumbering. Tangled limbs, bodies pulled closer. Della finds her legs tangled between Dom's and her arm stuck under a warm body. She pulls herself closer to the body and tries to ignore the numbness and fall asleep. (In the morning, she would deny that she curled up against him. Deny the warmth and the comfort she felt and deny the pleased smile that flickered at her lips as she fell asleep.) An hour later, he wakes, and is unable to find sleep again. He was one of the last awake, and he can remember Rose Weasley giggling at her cousin Al's sleep babbling (the monkeys are strong with this one), Erica Fullmer murmuring while only half awake and Dale and himself sitting sharing stories around the fire. Somehow, he had found himself next to Della Richmond and watched as she rolled over in her sleep. Eventually, he too closed his eyes and let himself drift off, not bothering to move himself away from her. He wakes once in the night, to find two Hufflepuff students he doesn't know too well sneaking off, and rolls over on his side. He wakes a second time to find that he's rolled over too far and a small, warm body is pressed against him, fingers loosely pressing against his back and arm trapped under him. Richmond. He grunts in annoyance. (Despite wanting to claim it was because she was pressed against him, it was more the discomfort that lying on her arm brought.) He tries to prize her off, for some strange reason that even he can't fathom, he thinks waking her wouldn't be too cruel. And Robert Nott has never had a problem with being cruel. Perhaps it's because while sleeping, she looks peaceful and harmless and not like the sort of girl who would shout and punch and throw swear words into the air at any chance she could get. He wakes her anyway, with a roll and a groan and completely by accident. Wincing, he turns on his side to avoid an awkward moment if she comes to and their faces are dangerously close. Instead, he hears the shuffling of feet and the stratching of sand on rocks as she rises and walks slowly away from the party of sleeping teenagers and the bonfire, twigs and shells crackling and snapping beneath her feet as she walks. She makes towards the waves that are tired of crashing and had taken to gently swaying back and forth across the beach. The sea tickles her bare feet as she sits down and extends her legs to meet the water. They're both surprised when he joins her. - "You don't snore." Those are his first words. He's firguring out his next few when she interrupts his train of thought. (It surprises him because he didn't think they were in the stage of the conversation when they took it in turns to speak - surely he had to offer an explanation as to why he had sat down, first?) "What're we meant to do after this? Like, this whole fucking... thing. The people and the parties and the summer. 'Cause I don't have a home anymore and I don't wanna go back to London. Or I do -- but I want to go back to a place that's not fucking shitty, you know?" Not looking at him, she pulls out a packet of cigarettes and lights one then hands the packet to him. "Like...," she takes in a lungful of smoke. "I just don't fucking know, yeah?" He occupies himself with lighting up, taking a drag and then pausing before he responds. "Having a heart to heart now are we, Richmond?" He smiles though. A small smile, a sympathetic, apologetic smile that says perfectly what he doesn't think words could - me either. (That's the second smile she's caught today, she thinks. Many more and it's going to start being a habit of hers.) Robert leans back on his hands, cigarette between his lips. "For a start, we'll be living. That's something, I hope." His words sit in the air and Della does not respond, only exhales. Eventually, she gets up and holds a hand out to him. Despite the raised eyebrow, he takes it and pulls himself up off the sand. "I hope too." - When morning drenches them in a mixture of sunlight and dew and messy hair, the tangled limbs untangle and the sand is brushed out of hair. The noise is muted compared to yesterday afternoon's hum, but the morning comes with squaking seagulls and soft snores of those still snoozing. It seems amusing to some when they look over and see Robert Nott's arm draped over Della Richmond and Della Richmond's fingers tangled in his. When they wake, they are greeted by a few moments of confusion and a soft blush touching both their cheeks. (They don't talk about it. They don't talk about anything, though. Ask any student of Hogwarts if Robert Nott and Della Richmond ever have talked about anything serious ever and they'll say no. Ask Robert and Della themselves and they'll deny it. Repeatedly. Especially to one another.) As the days go on and the party reach different beaches, they often spend their time apart. Most mornings, however, they find themselves in the same position. - Neither of them can remember how the summer ended. Before the know it, however, they're both searching for their own flats and their own jobs and throwing out their old uniforms and it all seems so soon. They finally reached the horizon and then they turned back, because reality was calling. (And both of them resented that.) They missed the mornings and they missed the days and they missed the alcohol and the talking and the sand. They missed school, too. They missed their home in Hogwarts and they missed the lessons and the arguments and the drama and they miss a lot of things, but eventually they realise that missing things is just another side effect of growing up. Grow up they do. Carelessly, stupidly, in a confused half-drunk state most of the time. It's ridiculous and confusing and mad and horrible and brilliant and hopeful. Neither of them are sure when that started either, but surprisingly they welcome it all the same. (Except in those sometimes when they wake up and they're alone and they long for the days of the summer long ago when they didn't have a home, but managed to find one all the same, lying beside each other on a beach hoping that horizon would never find them.)
