westwhere | (no subject)

Ah.

A sweet enough sentiment, but one Wrathion cannot entirely match. He does not want to remain here. Even if he would sorely miss Hermione, even there's the chance Anduin will forget everything between them -- well. He can only hope they might start anew. That his capacity to forgive would mean they had a second chance at it all.

But he does not want to remain here, if he can help it.

He tilts his head, pretending to assess her.

"It has been, of course, a privilege for you to know me."

Making jokes is an excellent way to get out of talking about things properly.

Boys. They never want to talk about their feelings, even when they're a dragon ten times her actual size.

"I'll splash you with hot water, don't think I wouldn't," she says, dryly. "You're almost as infuriating as you are handsome."

"You are aware the hot water will do me no harm."

So, splash away. It won't bother him. Now, cold water would be a threat.

She raises one hand, and flicks water at him. "I'm aware," she says, continuing the tradition of dry tone.

She can't even whack his forehead with a rolled up copy of the Daily Prophet, so this feels very unsatisfying.

But the reminder that heat matters little due to his draconic nature, she forgets all about that train of thought that she was going to pursue earlier of if you're already with someone, I can't like you like you, so that's why it's a problem you're naked.

Instead, she thinks about that time he was a dragon. Let ger ride on his back and all.

"Does this mean you're immune to heat? Fire magic, volcanoes, so on?"

"My ancestral home is inside a volcano."

Blackwing descent has lava pouring down inside of it. The heat does not bother black dragons, or else it would be a very poor choice indeed to set up a base there.

Not that they're known for exclusively making good choices, but still.

"That's..." Terrifying? Overwhelming hot? Literally overwhelmingly hot? "Neat."

She stares at the water for a moment, wondering what's wrong with her.

"So does this just feel tepid to you?"

"Hotter would be pleasant, but this visage is human."

Thus, the skin is more delicate than scales. It can be damaged, and it can probably burn. He's not really tested scalding water, as he's had no reason to, but given he knows the skin is more sensitive in general it stands to reason it would react poorly to direct contact with extreme heat.

She pulls a face. "Ew, yes, let's not experiment with boiling your skin off."

On a brighter note, she's no longer stressed out about his nipples being right there.

Anduin forces himself to sit back against the wall of the spring, with a casual air he does not necessarily feel.

"They... Help?" he replies, wincing slightly at the way he cannot even give her a straightforward answer. "I am not certain whether the waters themselves necessarily have medicinal properties, whether it is the heat of the pools, or whether I simply want to believe that they are doing something for me and therefore I feel better for a time. But."

He shrugs. "I do, so why question it too much? Even if the effects only seem to last for a few hours. It's good enough for me."

"I'd rather it stay on," he agrees.

Wrathion shifts a moment, then turns -- one arm resting along the side of the hot springs as he faces her better.

"You prefer it here?"

She implied she was in no hurry to leave, to forget people here. Does home not appeal? Is her situation here somehow better?

Chu Wanning had helped repair wards. It was something he was good at and could do efficiently. By the time he was done, he supposed he might rest. Except, that wasn't what happened.

Somehow or another, he found himself helping with little odd jobs. No one had asked him outright but he just sort-of offered (sort of because he just took things off people's hands when he saw they had a lot to do).

Which was why he found himself taking in freshly washed laundry for mending. He'd dried them and everything too.

"Here." He handed a shirt that he was told needed mending. There was a stain in it though, that doesn't appear to have come in the wash. It might be because his idea of doing laundry is just swirling things in water before taking them out.

She lets out a choked little laugh there. "No, it's objectively quite terrible," she admits. She knows how she sounds, honestly. Being sad about the idea of leaving, while staying is not painting a better picture. Staying has come with endless challenges, but throughout the time spent here she would be lying if she said she hasn't gotten better at magic, and other skills.

(Probably still can't poker face to save her life.)

"But..." she starts, then pauses. Lets out a sigh, shifting in her seat to turn and somewhat face him too, because - oh, being uppity about people making proper use of a hot spring is just too much, and she's broken so many rules and laws here at this point that she could stand to chill out! - it's also nicer to manage to talk about this with someone. "The idea of forgetting bothers me, I guess. Of all I've done and learned here being not only forgotten but becoming insignificant when I go back... It will be as if this Hermione has never existed - and I...quite like how resilient this Hermione is, so." A shrug here. "It'll be a shame."

And after a beat, she manages a wry smile. "Obviously it will have been an honour for me to have met you."

"I've made potions with shorter lifespans than that," she admits. "So if they help, why not just make use of them?"

She's here, trying to make use of them as well, isn't she? Not as much of a sceptic as she boasts being, because the first time that she came here, the waters had made her feel loose and pleased and she'd slept so well. Dreamlessly, even.

"I like the hot spring. It feels like a bubble bath, only without the bubbles - the point being, the hot water feels nice." She leans her head back against the edge with a sigh. "I'm not sure I'd enjoy the icy cold ones, and definitely not naked."

This is a nothing conversation, isn't it? It's haunted by a shade of shame, embarrassment, awkwardness - and Anduin and I have an understanding, which she so wants to needle Anduin about as well. But as much as Wrathion would love it, he can't be the subject of every damn talk she has with Anduin, for heaven's sake.

So she scrambles for something else. "Do you want to play a game?"

She doesn't expect company, but true to form, she's sat down as soon as she heard footsteps coming her way and brought her assortment of pillow covers and shirts out in her lap to mend.

Is she mending them by needle and thread? No, for the most part she finds herself a secluded room and reparos every one with magic, because she's not going to actually play along. It's a cover, honestly.

So, when the shirt gets dropped in her lap, outside, by someone wearing a talisman, she thinks ah, one of the travellers, like me. And mends the tear with magic, without even thinking it.

Some wizards that taught Hermione before used to say that the more you do a spell, the less you end up needing your wand or even the verbal spell for it. There are a few things she can do wandlessly by now: light the way, mend broken things, unlock doors. The shirt mends itself easily enough, and she holds it out before noticing the stain.

"You might need to scrub that a little with soap."

He's fascinated to watch the tear close up. How practical! On instinct, he tries to not appear interested but even so it's not hard to notice it.

He sits down and takes the shirt back, running a hand over where the tear had been. His mind starts turning. He wonders if such a thing could be replicated with cultivation? He wonders if anyone could learn, if it could be used on the Holy Night Guardians back home?

He frowns because he'd literally just washed this shirt? It was already clean, wasn't it?

"...I know how to do laundry." It sounds a little huffy, which it sort of is. Chu Wanning is the sort of person who doesn't like making mistakes or being perceived as not knowing how to do things. He's come to find he's fine not knowing things from other worlds but something as simple as laundry? Everyone knows how to do laundry!

Is what he thinks but then he starts folding the shirt in his hands and he clearly has no idea what he's doing as he does a poor job of it. He doesn't crumple it, but it's clear that his idea of folding is to make the shirt take up as little space as possible without any real thought put into how it might cause creases or whether it'd actually be able to be put away neatly.

Edited 2023-01-04 14:29 (UTC)

He considers that a long moment, flicking a faint smile in response to hers.

Forgetting is, of course, bothersome. It is, in a way, rendering things insignificant -- they will no longer be significant to them if they cannot remember, although in his heart the events have value regardless. They simply wouldn't impact his future decisions, unless in some fashion the memories did return later.

Still, one thing here is important:

"If you are resilient now," he says, "it is because you are capable of resilience, you always were and you will be capable again."

That isn't some quality unique to their location, it is a quality in Hermione herself.

Anduin offers her a smile.

"I can heal myself as well," he says. "But -- I would not mind taking you up on that offer. It would be nice to have an alternative, especially when I need to conserve my energies."

The conversation jump does seem a bit of a scramble, but he allows it. He'd prefer not to discuss being naked while he is the only one in such a state. He feels it rather calls attention to the fact, all things considered. So at the question, he cocks his head.

"A game?"

She probably should have thought of the game before she suggested they play it, because now she's left trying to think of something that isn't wizard's chess.

"Uhm - sure. Yes. Like two truths and a lie? You tell two truths and a lie and I have to guess which one is the lie. I think we've played this one before on the network...?"

She's not about to make herself enemies on the first attempt, or at least she doesn't really want to, so she starts to say: "I'm sure that it's just a stubborn stain."

And then she watches him start to crumple up the shirt and thinks oh no, I've been rude! and then thinks oh no, he can't fold? and then definitely thinks no, I shouldn't try to show him how to do that.

"I - uh." It does hurt to see all the wrinkles, but. Moving on. "I'm not sure we've met in person? Have we? I'm Hermione Granger." She then remembers that the name and surname order does not always function the same way in all worlds, or countries, so she adds: "That's Hermione, of clan Granger, I suppose."

She presses her lips together for a moment, swallowing back a remark in the light of I wasn't looking for validation for once, because it would probably be - at its root - a lie.

"I know that," she does say, with a brief wave of dismissal. "Anyway, the point is - I feel conflicted because this can't exactly be called temporary. We've been travelling together for ages now, long enough for me to learn details about people, about their worlds, long enough to know I'd miss them.

"So I can't throw myself at an open beacon without any hesitation, is that I am saying. I would hesitate, as much as I want to return home and resume my life there too."

He lets out a low hum of thought, eyes skimming away out over the water.

"I suspect you and Anduin have that in common."

Anduin would hesitate too, he knows, to leave this place. To leave the escape it offers him. A funny thing, to feel you are escaping the grand comforts of a castle, but Anduin of course has pressures too. Expectations. As easy as it may be to envy his strong group of followers, his throngs of staff and the prestige of his role the crown is not always a comfortable thing to wear.

She lets out a soft laugh at that. "I suspect we have a lot more in common than just that."

It's one way to change the subject, away from the discomfort of their eventual separation. No matter how many friends she makes here, no matter even if she grows more than fond of someone, at the end of it all - if she survives it all - she will return to her life, in Hogwarts after the final battle against Voldemort, and carry on without knowledge of any of this.

It's depressing. Better to distract from it.

So here she adds, "Except for the part where he's royalty and I'm the daughter of dentists." She voices one thought that has been with her since Serthica, a little out of the blue: "You know they would've really applauded your dental hygiene. Especially in your dragon form - sharp white teeth. Impressive."

This -- does feel a bit strange to be doing considering their present circumstances, but Anduin is willing to give it a try if it will make Hermione feel more at ease. He nods slightly, indicating his willingness to play and his vague recollection of the group playing something like this at some point or another.

(Anduin himself had not played. It's hard to join into group activities, hard to be a normal person when he's never really learned how.)

"Alright," he says. "Well..."

He contemplates this, for a long moment. What hasn't he told her, about himself? About his life, back at home. At least, he thinks to himself, she knows. About him. About who, and what he is. It does make thinking of things a bit easier.

"My father once became two people," he begins. That's one. "I was once held hostage by the orcs." That's two. "The biggest threat I face back home right now is an enemy known as The Banshee Queen. ...she calls me her Little Lion." Three. He turns to her, raising an eyebrow as if to say, well?

This, too, is easier. When she'd stood here days back, with Wrathion, she'd poured her heart out about being weary of returning home and forgetting people, and the black dragon had told her she and Anduin were alike. So, she wonders if Anduin ever uses absolutely transparent distraction mechanisms too - like two truths and one lie in a hot spring.

She considers her answer, a little smile at the lion visuals - how Gryffindor of him - and then her eyebrows shoot up.

"Surely the lie is that nobody could call you Little anything?" she blurts out, very aware of the build of his torso right now. She clears her throat and adds, "Or the orcs."

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legend

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i'm so very late so feel free to ignore but winter dandelions please