Work Text:
"How long do you really think we can keep this up?" you giggle as you stumble into Barty, tipsy and warm as the grass squishes under your feet.
"You worry too much," is Evan's only reply as he wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you close to steady you. "We'll be fine."
"We're going to get caught," you insist, but you find it difficult to truly be worried about a thing like that on a night like this. There's a bonfire nearby, warmth rolling off of it in waves as everyone sits around, drinking and laughing and stumbling about. Pandora's been using her wand to cast an eerie light, telling horror stories and tall tales. Someone had asked her a bit ago if they were really true, and she'd insisted that the only thing it takes to make a story true is to say it aloud.
Nearby, the Black Lake laps at the shore gently, the sound of the waves muffled by the barrage of spells that the upper years have cast to try to keep the party hidden.
"We will get caught," Barty agrees, a sharp grin crossing his face. "But not yet."
"So what - we just have a good time until our inevitable doom?" you laugh, and he shrugs.
"Well, what else is there to do in the meantime?" he counters, and you shake your head good-naturedly as you sink down ungracefully to sit cross-legged near the fire.
"I think you had a bit of a head start, didn't you, love?" Evan muses, looking down at you with an amused sort of look as he and Barty sit down on either side of you.
"Aw, what gave me away?" you laugh, and he grins in delight.
"Sitting in wet grass without complaining, for starters," he says sweetly, and Barty barks out a laugh.
"Oh, no," you wave Evan off. "That'll come soon, don't worry."
"Great," he quips, pulling you against him with an arm around your shoulders so that he can drop a kiss to the crown of your head.
"Am I bothersome?" you ask, a joking tilt to a serious question. Evan tightens his hold on you and Barty scoffs, smoothing down your hair as the wind threatens to tangle it.
"Bothersome?" Barty's voice has a disbelieving note to it. "Honestly, love, how could you think a thing like that?"
There's a loving air to your eye roll, a kind note to the way you press your lips together instead of quipping back. It's a nice evening, the bonfire warm and crackling, Evan's arm around you and Barty's side pressed against yours both welcome, loving weights.
It's a nice evening, you think, as Barty presses closer to you - a dog with a bone when it comes to anything that might make you unhappy. It's not the time. It's not the place.
"You're perfect, you know," he insists, and Evan's arm tightens around you in an agreeing sort of way.
"This party's perfect," you counter - a desperate sort of attempt to steer the conversation away from the weight that you'd accidentally tossed over it. It's a stumbling sort of diversion - but they love you earnestly, so it works.
"It is nice," Evan agrees, his hand rubbing up and down your arm as Barty presses his nose against your cheek, warmed from the bonfire. "I think it'll stay like that for a while, no matter what."
That was rather pointed, you think, but he dips down to press a kiss to your cheek after, and you find that you don't mind so much.
"I'd like to make sure of that," you offer in response, and he hums like he's pretending to think about it.
"I don't think that'll take much," he counters eventually, but there's a gentle sort of melody to Evan's voice that makes it difficult to argue.
"It's just that it won't last," you insist anyway. Somewhere nearby, Pandora flashes a beam of greenish light from her wand while she talks, and someone else lets out a shocked sort of shriek. "I want to enjoy what we have for a bit."
"It's just a party," Barty murmurs, his head knocking against your slightly as he presses his cheek against yours so that you can both stare at the bonfire.
"But we'll never get this party back," you respond quietly, and you feel his shrug.
"There'll always be more parties," Barty counters easily. You click your tongue, and he ducks down to press an apologetic sort of kiss to the side of your neck - because he knows that that isn't what you mean.
"I think as long as you have people to sit around a fire and get drunk with, there can always be another party," he adds, and it's a heavy sort of thing to say with a teasing sort of tone to cover it. You find, though, as you look around, as your friends laugh and drink and tell ghost stories, that it didn't really make much of a difference to bring up such a thing. It really didn't ruin anything at all.
"Evan," you sigh, rolling your head back against his shoulder so that he can look down at you.
"Yes, love?" is his kind response, and you widen your eyes, a bambi sort of look that has him narrowing his own.
"My pants are all wet now," you say sadly, and Barty barks out a laugh that has a few heads turning.
"Good to see you're coming back to yourself, baby," he says easily, amusement colouring his voice. You'd respond, really, but Evan's already carefully manhandling you to stand back up so that he can brush bits of grass off your legs.
"You missed a spot," you murmur down to him, and he shoots you a stern look. It's a bit weak, though, you find, as he takes your hands and presses them to his shoulders so that you have something steady to stop your tipsy swaying.
"I'm gonna go look in the lake," you murmur when Evan stands back up, your hands sliding from his shoulders to his chest. Barty grips onto your hips from where he's standing behind you and hooks his chin over your shoulder.
"What for?" he asks coaxingly.
"Because it's pretty this time of year," you supply simply.
"You think everything's pretty this time of year," Barty counters, but he takes your hand into his, still, so that the three of you can slip away from the light of the fire and the noise of the party. He's right, of course - you do think everything's pretty this time of year. The leaves change and the earth quiets and the air starts to taste sweet.
The light of the bonfire just reaches the shore of the lake, and as you stand with your toes just beyond the ripples of water, the light illuminates it in endless, dancing shades of orange and yellow. A couple of rowdy Gryffindors have enchanted some jack-o-lanterns to float around and spook people, and the moving lights flicker around the water to distort it further.
"Don't do that," comes Evan's sigh as you lean forward a bit too much, his arm a firm band around your middle, now.
"Don't what? Fall into the two-foot shallow end?" you quip back, and Barty's laugh makes something warm fizzle in your chest.
"We just got your pants dried off, my love - give us a chance there," he retorts, and there's a loving sort of tilt to it - a warmth to Barty's voice that makes you feel a bit more tipsy than you were a few minutes ago.
It's in an effort to get away from it, then, that you turn your gaze back down and stare into the swirling colours of the lake. Your reflection stares back at you - sort of, distorted and discoloured and wholly unfamiliar. When you look to either side of you, you find that you can spot Evan and Barty's reflections rather easily.
Maybe it's where you're standing. Maybe the light from the fire is catching on your reflection in a way that it isn't touching theirs.
Or maybe, you think, as the laughter and the light around you sort of dies down - maybe there's just a stranger looking back at you.
You'd dwell on that much longer, surely, if Evan didn't start tugging incessantly on your arm - if the noise of the party didn't very abruptly explode into panic.
"Time to go," Barty laughs, and when you look up to see what everyone's running from, you're greeted with several displeased teachers stomping across the grounds towards you.
"Oh, yea," you agree, and that's really all it takes for the three of you to join the scrambling students who scatter in all sorts of directions.
"They've already seen us, you know," you shout over the commotion, the air in your lungs stuttering just a bit as you run. "I don't know what the point of this is."
"You wanted the party to last, didn't you?" Evan laughs as he continues tugging on your arm.
"Well -"
"It's not over until we're caught, babe," Barty chimes in, and it's stupid and reckless and loving enough that you find you don't really mind the burn in your lungs or the cold wind whipping across your face as you run side by side.
You wonder, sort of absently, if the teachers have put the bonfire out yet. You wonder if the lake still lights up the way that it had for you - if your reflection still stares up, whole and known and waiting for you.