A/N: This chapter and the next were originally one, but the length got away from me and it had to be separated. So this story has been changed to 16 chapters (guess that can be good or bad news depending on how much you want this story to be over).
Summary: Better sense is screaming at Felix that this is possibly the worst idea he's ever had, that he's about to undo all the progress he's made. But though his better sense has maintained the upper hand most of the last year, thirty minutes with Juniper is enough to send it packing to the very back of his mind...
"Allow me to introduce my son, Felix." The Rosier Patriarch offers the young woman's hand to his son, who accepts and bends over it stiffly, making eye contact for only the briefest second. "I believe you two have quite a bit in common. I'll leave you to chat."
Felix twists his mouth into what passes for a smile at these sort of society parties, while inwardly he groans. His father's attempts to facilitate interactions with pure-blood girls are usually more adroit. But with his first year as a Dragonologist in Peru a success and with no plans to return to England anytime soon, Felix supposes his father is getting a bit desperate.
Felix glances at the clock on the mantle, mentally calculating how much longer before he can leave without disturbing propriety.
"You are an alchemist, then?"
The voice, low for a woman and shaded by a light, lilting accent, startles Felix, as does the unusual question.
"I beg your pardon?"
"An alchemist," the young woman repeats. She's the same height as Felix and meets his eyes steadily. "Your father is sure we will have much in common, you and I. I assume that means you are an alchemist, also?"
Felix permits himself the smallest of smirks. "I'm afraid not. My father is under the impression that being pure-blood is the only important commonality between any two people."
"I see." The young woman flicks dark, wavy tresses over her shoulder and smiles, revealing a dimple in one cheek. "Then we have one thing in common after all. My parents are also, as the English say, old-fashioned."
She winks. Dark lashes flutter over dark eyes, and Felix takes his first serious look at Aurelie.
Felix knows he would not usually be permitted to sequester himself in a corner, making interesting conversation with a single person while the party drags on around him. His father pokes his head round the corner every quarter hour to scrutinise the pair of them, but this is more amusing than annoying to Felix. For once, he's in the company of someone else who notices and understands and laughs quietly alongside him. Felix spends the entire evening with Aurelie, who stays long past the fashionable hour, and when she finally takes her leave, it's with the promise of a letter to follow.
Aurelie does write, and Felix writes back. It isn't the comfortable, easy correspondence he shares with Juniper; it's something altogether different. It's titillating, exchanging flirtations with a beautiful, intelligent woman, interested in Felix in a way no beautiful, intelligent woman has ever been before. And it isn't long before the desire to see her again wins out. Leave from Peru isn't easy, but Felix manages, trekking miles to designated apparition points to visit Aurelie in France whenever he has time to spare, sometimes for only a single evening.
In spite of their mutual interest in the other, their first time together is awkward and unnerving. Felix does his best, but he feels certain he has not quite met Aurelie's well-established standard; something about her desire for distance through the night and her rapid retreat the next morning. As with everything in life, he resolves to work harder, do better, and eventually achieve his customary level of perfection. He does what research he's able, pays more attention to the fireside conversations of the other men on his team, even daring a few well-placed and casual questions. But instead of becoming more comfortable with time, each liaison seems to drive them further apart. Felix began to dread the uneasy silence that sags between them as they lay next to each other in the dark, and is always relieved when Aurelie takes her leave swiftly afterward. Her interest in him seems to cool distinctly as the year progresses. She has absolutely no desire to visit him in Peru, and can no longer even feign an interest in dragons or his work, except to mention rather pointedly in one curt letter how "all that" will need to be wrapped up before they can be married.
At this, Felix balks. He's always known this was the endgame for the two of them - he has a shrewd idea both families have already decided on dates and divided up holidays - but the idea of abandoning his newfound freedom for a lifetime laying next to this woman, cold and beautiful and sharp as a diamond, is utterly terrifying. Instead, Felix throws himself into his correspondence with Juniper, who points out that Aurelie isn't the only eligible, pureblood woman in the world, reminds him he's hardly done any serious investigation into the subject, and encourages him to hold out.
"There's got to be at least one pure-blood girl out there with a passing interest in dragons. It'd be a shame for you to settle for someone that can't appreciate all your talent," she writes, in a letter Felix folds and unfolds so many times, the parchment eventually falls into pieces he has to tape back together. He can't stop re-reading it. The words make him glow. Aurelie's early letters teem with tantalising coquetry, but Juniper simply declares her compliments like established points of fact. If Aurelie is a diamond, then Juniper is a dragon egg; rougher and hotter, a different sort of object altogether, but infinitely more precious to Felix.
Felix can't imagine Juniper ever permitting a chilly silence to blow between them as they lay in bed together. Juniper, with her easy laughs and natural way of setting people at ease, would know exactly what to say to make those moments beautiful and memorable, even if he doesn't. They're hard for Felix to picture with no good point of reference, but he feels instinctively that nights with Juniper would be better.
Which is what makes the aftermath of their brief tryst so much harder to bear.
Felix returns to work as usual, but there's an ache inside him he cannot soothe, like a miniature dragon tooth lodged in his flesh. Unbearable waves of longing and pain beat against him every minute of the day, exhausting him and keeping his fractured nerves on fire. True focus is impossible. He's caught between an unquenchable thirst for Juniper and resonating, bitter anger for the way she's treated him. After every sacrifice he's made for her, Juniper is unwilling even to try. He didn't know it was possible to hate and love somebody so fiercely and simultaneously.
I don't want things to change. Her words kick at his already bruised brain. Somehow, in spite of everything he had done, he still had not been good enough. On some level, Felix knows it must be his fault. He should never have let that night occur. He had rushed in senselessly, swept away by emotion, just as he had the night she'd been attacked. How might everything have been different if he'd only listened to his common sense? The regret makes him physically ill.
Juniper's first letter arrives a week after his return, and Felix can't prevent his heart leaping into his throat when he recognises the hand-writing. For a few wild minutes, as he finds a quiet spot and tears into the envelope with shaky fingers, he's convinced everything will be fixed. Surely Juniper will be fit to burst with desperate apologies and confessions of feelings she was too muddled to express before. But as Felix scans the lines eagerly, his hopes are dashed. It's a few dutiful paragraphs about Juniper's return to the Khanna tree farm, her reconciliation with her friends, some minor improvement in her hands as she focuses on her healing once more, and her subsequent decision to return to school. She's breezy and pleasant, as if nothing remotely intimate had ever passed between them. Felix throws the offensive parchment into the fire, then spends the evening meticulously reassembling the ashes.
His late night craft project makes Felix late for the next day's shift, and it's a testament to his genuine enervation that he doesn't even notice. Nor does he notice the eyes of his Senior Dragonologist following him as he wanders into the Peruvian Vipertooth habitat an hour past his scheduled time. Felix goes through the motions of inspecting his dragon, instructing his team of assistants in a weary, hollow voice, entirely oblivious to his superior's expression of growing concern. It isn't until Felix fails to notice the tell-tale signs of impending flame from the mercurial young Vipertooth and has to be yanked out of harm's way by a terrified assistant that Luis Rashbold steps in. Barking orders over his shoulder to the rest of the team, Rashbold heaves his junior dragonologist out of the fray by the back of his neck, and half-drags him across the grounds to a carefully concealed paddock.
The simple covered lean-to serves as a hidden observation deck for researchers and other less daring visitors to the Reserve. One long window looks out over the grounds, offering a splendid view of the team of wizards now stunning the legs out from under the rampaging she-dragon, but the paddock's various enchantments prevent anyone outside seeing within.
Rashbold tosses an indignantly spluttering Felix onto one of the paddock's three-legged stools.
"Alright, talk," demands the bulky dragonologist, looming over Felix, fists on hips.
Felix straightens on the low seat, glaring at Rashbold with what little dignity he can scrounge up.
"What are you on about?"
"Pack it in that," Rashbold scolds. "You nearly had it back there! A blind streeler could have dodged that flame, yet my junior dragonologist wants the aid of a bunch of teenagers to keep himself kickin'. What in Merlin's name's going on with you?"
Felix rubs the back of his neck mulishly. "I'm just...tired. Not enough sleep last night."
"Rubbish. You've been shirty and careless for a week now, ever since you got back from your little furlough. You can't possibly be this bad at your job, or you'd never have survived Peru."
Felix pushes off from the stool brusquely.
"It won't happen again," he assures his superior, voice dripping with obsequious sarcasm, but Rashbold refuses to be goaded.
"It will," he replies coolly,"If you don't get whatever's eating you off your mind. Keep this up and you're going to get yourself killed. And you can't even imagine the paperwork nightmare that is."
Felix says nothing. He squares up against Rashbold, calculating his chances of successfully pushing past the much larger man and reaching the exit.
"It's that girl, isn't it. The one you went to see?" pries Rashbold doggedly, ignoring Felix's murderous look. "I can put two and two together as well as the next bloke. She turned you down, didn't she? Or called it off?"
It's no good, concludes Felix bitterly; even if he were in peak condition, there's no way he could draw his wand on Rashbold before the brawny man knocked it from his hand. Instead, Felix emits a noise somewhere between disgust and exasperation and storms off to the window. He watches the technicians conduct routine scale care on the now unconscious dragon, and waits for the heat in his face to cool. He doesn't really expect his little tantrum to defeat the obstinate Rashbold, and he braces himself for further inquisition. He's therefore caught off guard when Rashbold speaks again in a voice oddly gruff and choked, as if trying to force a soothing tone through a throat not constructed for it.
"C'mon, mate. It happens to the best of us. Nothing to be ashamed of. It's hell, but we've all been there, haven't we? It'll be right."
Tears, something Felix has managed to avoid for so much of his life and now finds himself constantly threatened by, prick at the corners of his eyes. He wishes Rashbold would yell at him or berate him, even draw his wand. Felix has defences for all of those things. He has no armour for this sort of camaraderie.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Felix tries to snarl, but it comes out too wet to be threatening.
There's a pause, then the scrape of a stool being pulled across ground, and the creaking protest of wood as Rashbold settles his bulk into it.
"Alright then. Tell it me."
It's neither sarcastic or saccharine. Just a plain invitation. And words slip out from around the growing lump in Felix's throat before he can even decide what to say. Ironically, it reminds him of conversations with Juniper in his final year at Hogwarts. She, too, had a knack for wrenching Felix's voice from him without his conscious consent, as though she knew a secret password to his thoughts he didn't know existed.
To Felix's own astonishment, he finds himself confessing nearly everything to do with Juniper, from his first inkling of feeling for an unlikely fourteen year old, to his arrival at her Quidditch match, and the horrid mess that followed. But when he reaches the final part of the story, something stops him short. Some piece of well-honed propriety simply will not allow him to discuss that with this man he barely knows.
"I didn't know where else to go so I took her back to the Leaky Cauldron and I...we... had a discussion. I...made it clear how I felt about her, that I loved her. But...she said...she didn't want things to change."
Felix takes a deep shuddering breath. All this uncharacteristic openness makes him woozy and in need of a sit, but he isn't ready to turn and face Rashbold just yet. He hears whining notes of concern from the stool indicating the large body on it has shifted positions.
"Nah, you don't."
Felix cocks his head, wondering if he hasn't understood Rashbold around his heavy accent.
"Don't what?"
"You don't love this girl," Rashbold declares broadly. It's such a strange response to everything Felix has just said that it takes a minute for him to interpret it as an insult and allow defensive anger to rear its head.
"Yes, I do!" he protests, whipping around to face Rashbold defiantly. The bulky man has his long legs kicked out in front of him and his arms behind his head, in a supremely relaxed manner that Felix is sure must be for show since he can't possibly be comfortable balancing all his weight on that ridiculously small stool.
"Nah, mate. You love the idea of this girl," Rashbold explains, and his need to appear so at ease in the face of Felix's heart-rending story makes Felix's blood boil. He stares daggers at Rashbold, but the older man only continues coaxingly, "C'mon, mate. You couldn't even name two things you liked about her beside what? She's smart, kind, beautiful? Anyone you catch the bug for sounds like that. I'm not insulting your girl." He holds up a conciliatory hand, catching sight of Felix's flared nostrils. "I'm sure she's lovely and all, when she's not being a bit of a drama queen, but the rest? All that stuff you love about her? It's all made up in your head."
Rashbold suddenly sits up, propping his arms on his knees. "Tell me this. What's her favourite colour, your girl?
Felix blinks. "What?"
"Her favourite colour," Rashbold repeats, very slowly and deliberately as if to a small child. "The colour she likes best. What is it?"
It's such an insipid question, Felix actually snorts before giving his memory a quick scan. A favourite colour? Surely that had come up naturally in conversation once, or been mentioned off-hand in a letter? But if it had, Felix can't call the information to mind. Panicking slightly, he grabs hold of the colour she sports in the majority of his memories:
"Green! She's always wearing green."
A supercilious smile crosses Rashbold's face.
"That's house colours mate. Not the same thing." He changes tact before Felix can argue. "How does she take her tea, then?"
This time, Felix pales a little. He's seen Juniper drink tea, on multiple occasions. Had she put anything in it? Probably. He's never noticed.
"How about a favourite meal? Or favourite Quidditch team?" Rashbold inquires, that infuriating smile still playing about his lips. "Do you know where she lives? Her parents names? Do you even know her full name?"
"What does any of that matter?" Felix bursts in agitation, "That's all - that's just...little things. They're not important."
"No, mate," Rashbold shakes his head, the condescending smile replaced by a look of uncharacteristic earnestness. "That little stuff, that's everything. That's who people really are. A bunch of little quirks and preferences and opinions all jumbled together. If you don't know all the little things about someone, you don't really know them at all. Just an idea of them. It's like fancying a celebrity in a magazine. You don't love them as a person, you just love their picture and all the stuff you've imagined about them."
Rashbold stands, ignoring Felix's open-mouthed umbrage, and brushes off his trousers briskly. "You'll be right, mate. Trust me. Give it a few weeks, it'll all fade and you'll be back in business. Just try not to get yourself burnt to crisp before then."
He claps a burly hand to Felix's shoulder briefly, dark eyes twinkling, before striding from the paddock.
Righteous indignation toward Rashbold takes the place of his regularly scheduled misery for the rest of the day. What does Rashbold know about him and Juniper? Absolutely nothing. And it isn't his business anyway, great nosy git. And what was he, Felix, playing at telling the older man things he's never confessed to anyone before? This whole situation must truly be driving him mad.
But for all his justified resentment toward Rashbold, part of Felix can't help but feel touched at the older man's interest in him, his willingness to sit and listen to what Felix had to say. It's a rare enough occurrence. The only other person who has ever been quite so conscientious about Felix's emotional well-being was, well, Juniper. And Rashbold's blunt words suddenly click into place in Felix's head.
What if he's right? thinks Felix as he tosses and turns on his camp bed that night. After all, aren't his favourite letters from Juniper the ones where she talks about him? Complimenting him? Comforting him? Ruminating on their correspondence, Felix realises they hardly ever discuss Juniper herself, beyond her illicit Cursed Vault adventures and his constant admonitions that she stay safe. He's always thought he knew Juniper better than nearly anyone, that was why he loved her, after all; but maybe what he really loved was having someone who cared about him.
Felix rolls over and folds his arms behind his head. What does he know about Juniper, then? Well, that she's impulsive and reckless, talented, but with a rather short attention span, shrewd as any Slytherin when it comes to solving mysteries, yet somehow oblivious to anyone or anything that doesn't matter to her at that moment, including schoolwork. Nearly the opposite of him in every way, when it comes right down to it. The more Felix mulls it over, the more he realises the Juniper he's in love with is mostly fantasy, a character he built in his head. The loss of which might be disappointing, but it's nothing he can't recover from because, in the end, it isn't real.
It isn't real.
Felix repeats this idea like a mantra until sleep rescues him from further thought. And for the next months, he applies the phrase like a burn salve against his thoughts every time longing or grief threatens him.
Juniper's letters keep coming; every week at first, then every month once her final year of school begins. But for the first time since his graduation, Felix does not write back. He reads her accounts of her continued recovery and her inevitable adventures and practices maintaining an appropriate emotional distance.
She informs him of her resignation as Slytherin Quidditch captain in favour of Skye Parkin, thus ending her illustrious school Quidditch career. It isn't real, he scolds the subsequent wriggle of pleasure at the idea of her spending significantly less time with Murphy McNully or Charlie Weasley. She's drawn back into the Cursed Vaults, as always, matching wits and wands with R once again. It isn't real, he reminds himself as worry for her safety guts him. She's a talented witch, fully of age, able to make her own bad decisions and it's no skin off his nose if she's hurt.
And as the year draws to a close, the pain begins to fade, like scar tissue closing over a wound; until he can think of Juniper and feel nearly nothing, so long as he doesn't prod his feelings too forcefully.
Christmas comes and goes. Juniper tactfully neglects to mention their plans to see each other over the holiday in her December letter. Felix feels slightly guilty. It's the first year since he left school he hasn't sent her anything for Christmas, but he puts it out of his mind. She has plenty of friends, he assures himself, he doubts she'll even notice.
The new year drags on bleak and chill. For whatever reason, The Reserve doesn't fill Felix with the same elation Peru did. For the first time in years, he's stuck in one place, and largely alone, with nothing to occupy his newly acquired free time. For something to do, Felix begins to write. Publication is a requirement before one can apply for a Senior Dragonologist position. For the last four years, Felix has kept a notebook full of ideas and research topics for papers and even books he tells himself he'll write when he has the time. Now he does. He spends most of his spare moments writing and researching, but his enthusiasm for the enterprise quickly wanes.
As much as he tells himself he shouldn't, Felix misses talking to Juniper. Occasionally, he toys with the idea of replying to one of the letters she continues to send. It's been enough time now, he hardly feels anything at all toward her. What could it hurt? Only it's been so long since she heard from him last, Felix can't think of any way to begin a letter without addressing his long silence, and the reason for it, and all his attempts end up tossed in the fire.
True, Felix's fire for Juniper has been essentially smothered, his iron self-discipline has seen to that. But he can't help the occasional fantasy of Juniper appearing at the Reserve unexpectedly, concerned about his silence, and throwing her arms around him in joy the way she had after the Quidditch match last spring. He reminds himself dutifully that it isn't real love that generates this, just a desire to feel something, anything to break up the monotony of time cards and paperwork. But he allows it, if only for something to occupy his mind. Which is why, as he tromps through the dirty snow after his shift one particularly blustery morning, Felix doesn't immediately register the sight of Juniper waiting for him at the end of the path as real. She trots about in place, arms wrapped around herself, clearly freezing. Her head is tucked into her chest, hiding from the wind as best she can in her inadequate coat, so she doesn't notice Felix's tentative approach.
"Juniper?" he asks in disbelief.
The young woman looks up and smiles; a lop-sided grin Felix could identify from a mile away. She stomps through the snow toward where Felix has stopped in his tracks. His brain is no longer able to control his limbs, every cell engaged in reconciling Juniper's presence with reality.
"What - how-" Felix splutters as she marches nearer until she's close enough for him to make out the individual snowflakes dotting the top of her head. "What are you doing here?" he somehow manages to ask.
"Waiting for you. Or that's what I'm doing out here in the cold anyway. That man from the office - your office, I mean -he said you'd be back soon so I thought I'd try to catch you."
Felix's mouth opens and closes like a fish, while Juniper shivers and hunches deeper into her thin coat.
"Can we talk somewhere else? Warmer maybe?"
A dream, this must be a dream, thinks Felix. He's dreaming he's at the Reserve's only pub, sitting just across from a windswept Juniper attempting to breathe life back into her frozen fingers. The barman deposits two mugs of the locally popular warm, spiced Butterbeer, and Juniper wraps her hands around it gratefully. Felix can only stare. After a minute of strained silence, he pulls his mug toward him and takes a long swallow. The liquid scalds the roof of his mouth. Which has to mean he's awake. Which means Juniper really is here, in front of him. A bubbling excitement brews in his chest that his mantra cannot extinguish.
"The real reason I'm here," explains Juniper into her mug, "is...for a job interview."
Felix chokes on his second sip. He coughs into his hands while Juniper stares determinedly at the table, clenching her Butterbeer so tightly her knuckles are white.
"You're a dragonologist now, then?" asks Felix once his spluttering subsides.
"No," Juniper says, still refusing to meet Felix's eye. "I...wanted to apply for the open healing position here. I'm doing better, quite a bit better, actually." She nods at her hands wrapped around the mug, and it registers to Felix for the first time how still they are. "But St Mungo's only offers a limited number of intern positions to students out of school, and I know I won't score near high enough to get in. That was really sort of my whole post-school plan, on the off-chance I ever made it out alive. So I'm looking into alternatives, and Professor Snape mentioned this job. Apparently, the qualifications for healers here are a bit lax. I guess they sort of...take anyone they can get, so I thought I'd apply. But... I wanted to talk to you about it first."
Juniper's words seem to be reaching Felix's brain on a delay, so she has time to take another long swig of Butterbeer before Felix has processed her final statement.
"About what?" he asks belatedly.
"About the job. I mean...I won't take it if you don't want me to."
"Why...wouldn't I want you to take a job?" Felix asks slowly. Some combination of the cold and the surreality of Juniper's very presence makes him feel slow and stupid. He can't understand what she's asking of him. Juniper finally lifts her head fully, her expression unreadable.
"Felix, you haven't written all year."
It's Felix's turn to stare into his frothing mug. He raises it to his mouth, hiding as much of his face as he can.
"Yes, about that. I've been rather busy. I'm so-"
"You don't have to apologise," Juniper interjects hastily. "I understand. Completely. I didn't mean - I mean, I deserved it, and... you've had all this to get used to and I'm sure it's really overwhelming. I only meant - you know - this is your space, and if you don't want me to...intrude on it, I won't."
Pink patches that have nothing to do with cold appear on her cheeks as Juniper hides herself in her coat, and something about her obvious discomfort starts a primal fire inside Felix's stomach. It's a feeling he hasn't had in so long, and it jumpstarts Felix's sluggish mental faculties.
"Not at all," he tells her. Juniper shoots a confused look at him and he clarifies, "I mean, I don't mind. At all. In fact, I think it's an excellent idea."
Juniper makes a valiant effort to raise her eyebrows, "You do?"
"Yes," Felix replies, an almost giddy smile appearing on his face at her familiar expression. He hides it behind a hand, tilted in front of his mouth in a gesture of thoughtfulness. "I think it'd be good for you to get out of the country for a bit. You'd do quite well here. You're not scared of dragons, good under pressure. And we can't seem to keep a healer."
"Yeah, that's what the director said. Guivré ."
"You've met Guivré ?"
"Yeah, for the interview." Juniper leans forward in her seat, warming to their conversation. "He didn't even seem to care about the fact that I haven't taken the NEWTs yet, and he didn't ask anything about my marks. Wouldn't even look at my transcripts. He just asked about the Cursed Vaults, mostly. And that time with the common welsh green in my third year."
Felix no longer bothers to hide his grin. "That sounds about right. That's exactly the sort of person he is. He believes experience is a better teacher than education. So, you've already had the interview, then?"
Juniper colours once more and retreats back into her coat. "Um...yeah. Yeah, I did first thing this morning. Sorry, I did want to talk to you first, but-"
Felix overrides her apology. "Did he mention whether he liked you for the job or not?"
Juniper takes a shallow, shaky breath. "Yes, actually. He - he said it's mine if I want it." She tries to purse her lips over a proud smile. "But I told him I had to think about it."
"Take it."
For the first time that day, Juniper meets Felix's eyes.
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
Both their faces flush with heat at the memory of the last time this word passed between them. Felix looks away first, clearing his throat.
"Alright. I will then," Juniper says. "Thank you." She takes another sip of butterbeer, holding the mug close to her body as if relishing the heat or the ability to keep the mug upright, while Felix's brain goes to war.
Better sense is screaming at Felix that this is possibly the worst idea he's ever had, that he's about to undo all the progress he's made. But though his better sense has maintained the upper hand most of the last year, thirty minutes with Juniper is enough to send it packing to the very back of his mind where its screams sound more like squeaks, leaving Felix free to revel in the sense of elation blossoming through him at the idea of living in close proximity to Juniper once again.
"So," Juniper interrupts Felix's giddy musings, " Guivré didn't mention where people live while they're here? Does everyone...apparate in, or...?"
"Some do, yes. There's limited housing on the Reserve itself, but there's a few buildings they've turned into flats. Dragonologists generally have seniority, then the assistants and researchers and everyone else."
"Oh." Juniper falls silent, picking at a spot on the table with a fingernail, and it takes Felix a minute to understand what her nerves are about.
"I'm sure I can get you a place on the grounds. In case you'd rather not apparate."
"I can," she insists. "If I have to. It's not a big deal, it's just...I'm not really supposed to do it all the time, and-"
"It's not a problem," Felix assures her. "I'll figure something out." He basks in the glow of Juniper's wide, grateful smile. And a brilliant idea occurs to Felix that makes his demoted better sense absolutely livid.
"You sure about this?" asks the nervous young assistant, staring at the proferred key as though it were likely to turn into a snake and strike him.
"Yes, Lambton, I'm sure and please don't ask again," says Felix trying hard to keep exasperation from his voice. He dangles the key out to the gawky teenager.
"But...you're sure this is allowed? The Upper Flats are for proper dragonologists. Won't I be out of place?"
Felix grits his teeth. "Don't you want to be a proper dragonologist yourself one day?"
"Yeah, o' course."
"Well, then," Felix cajoles, "how better to learn than to live with proper dragonologists? You can make friends, get extra help on your research. It'll be a major stepping stone for your career!"
" 'Spose that's true..." Felix watches the boy's dull eyes light up slowly at the prospect. He reaches out for Felix's key and fishes in a pocket for his own.
"But...why would you want to live in the Lower Flats?" Lambton asks, holding his key out to Felix. "They're absolute shite, you know."
"Never you mind," snaps Felix, snatching the key from Lambton's twitchy fingers.
Those Dragonologists wishing to save a bit of money and be as close to their dragons as possible are usually put up in the Upper Flats, an old but dignified building that had probably once been a large manor house before the Reserve bought the land. It's nearly always cold, and not lavishly furnished, but it passes for comfort and the Dragonologists have little complaints; or if they do, they simply move on as soon as they're able.
The Lower Flats is the cruel moniker given the ramshackle building just down the path from the Upper Flats. No one knows what, if any, sort of building it had been before the Reserve got hold of it and added on stories and side rooms with whatever materials were to hand, but it now has more in common with Frankenstein's monster than any traditional forms of architecture. These flats are given to assistants and technicians, or any Reserve staff members or visitors the director wants to get rid of. Lambton, being the most recent addition to the Reserve, had a top three-bedroom flat all to himself. However, once another new low-level employee arrived, such as a healer, he'd be forced to share. That is, until Felix graciously offered to swap flats with the young man for reasons Felix is well aware of and is determined not to think about too closely.
Felix has heard assistants complain long and often about how the building ought to be condemned, but he's always assumed them to be exaggerating. Right up to the moment his foot smashes through one of the rough hewn planks serving as stairs. It takes Felix a disproportionate amount of time to reach the top floor, as he carefully circumvents the more wobbly "steps", presumably held in place by magic, but not a particularly trustworthy sort. At the top of the winding staircase, he nudges what passes for a door open with his foot. The wood slab separates from the frame with a horrid screeching sound, swinging inward to reveal squalor Felix was previously unaware humans could live in.
He gulps as he steps inside with exceptional caution. There a disconcerting number of burn-holes in the floorboards. The walls are covered in an uneven layer of green fuzz that on closer inspection appears to be the remains of old, peeling wall paper. There's a sofa in the great room that's predominately springs, and a simple unlikely mattress is the only furniture provided in each of the bedrooms. But even the thick layers of cobwebs decorating the corners isn't enough to kill Felix's growing excitement. It'll be work, but he's always been excellent at those household-y sort of spells, and it will give him something to occupy his time until Juniper arrives. Felix settles into his renovation project in higher spirits than he's had in months.
Unable to wait for June to reveal the news to Juniper, Felix starts up their correspondence once more. He informs her he's found her a room on the Reserve, and mentions in passing that it's in the same flat as his, neglecting to illuminate any of the circumstances that have made such a happy coincidence possible. Juniper's response is as enthusiastic as he could have hoped. She makes the expected number of jokes about his newly reinstated status as her live-in prefect followed by a more serious assurance that she's "really glad" to be near him again. Felix is just worrying that cheekbones might fracture from the force of his smile when her next line forces the bottom out of his stomach.
"I forgot to mention I have a friend who'll be coming to the Reserve this summer, as well! He got a job as a junior assistant the same time as me, so I imagine he'll be living near us if there's room. I've mentioned him before, not sure if you remember. Charlie Weasley?"