Scary Kind of Feeling

If he said it was tall then it had to be a building; she didn't know of any fence in Hogsmeade that high.  "No..." she let the word trail as she felt further along the wall.  She couldn't see any more now than before but if she had her bearing right they were technically facing a wall so that wasn't surprising.  "But where there's a wall there must be a door"  she reasoned with a tone that suggested she was talking to herself as much as she was to him.  With her arm still out stretched she took a step to her right, pulling him by the hand as she edged along the wall.

Within a few shuffled steps her fingers found and curled past the edge of the wall.  "Here's the corner!" she exclaimed, shuffling faster to peer around it.  She caught sight of what might be the glow of light but lost it almost immediately as walked into what had to be someone's front rose bushes and lurched forward.

It sounded convincing when she said it; at any rate, Elias was entirely keen to believe it, which could account for his eagerness to follow her, as he let himself be tugged along after her without any resistance. Of course, this meant he rounded the corner rather too fast after her, and had just as little warning as her when his excitement met a stumbling block, something in their path that had made her come to a sudden halt and saw her pulling him forwards by the hand -

So Elias toppled into the thicket of rosebushes after her with a muffled sort of yelp, unintentionally finding himself making about as much contact with her as he was with the mass of thorny twigs that were brushing into him and already sticking to his clothes. This predicament might well have been out of the frying pan and into the fire, if Elias wasn't certain there was a bit of light permeating the darkness from somewhere not far off, because he was sure he could make shapes out now in the world, even in the clutches of this rose-thicket. "Well," Elias murmured with a brief bewildered chuckle, gingerly patting everything around him to get his bearings as though he were still entirely blind. "Are you alright?"

---

There was the briefest of moments where she thought she might right herself but in those moments she'd also forgotten two important things; 1) she was kind of pulling someone along behind her and 2) whatever bush was currently biting into her shins probably had a good hold on her skirt.  She felt him collide into her and the layers of cloth effectively became a snare around her ankles.  Tumbling into the bush was not as bad as it might have been in winter but it was still - you know - a rose bush.  It had no qualms about biting into what soft skin or delicate fabric it could find but the most part she was unharmed.  

Laying there for a moment as her bearings slowly came back to her, she could feel him shuffling around presumably doing the same and it was impossible not to notice how very close he was.  "I think so."  she reached up to wrest a bit of her hair from the bush's grip as her first attempt to right herself.  She could feel the sting of a few cuts but considering she'd just pulled a stranger into a bush they weren't a priority.  "You?"

Thorny as the bushes were, it was hardly the worst fall Elias had faced, having crashed down into a tree branch or two in his time. (Or two: that was rather the understatement, actually.) Rosebushes from thirty foot up, now that would be uncomfortable.

Possibly the most uncomfortable element of this was that he was not rolling around in a rosebush in the dark alone, but with a young lady he didn't even know. Not that there had been anything intentional about this. Especially not when, trying to be chivalrous, Elias reached for her hand again to pull her up with him, only to find his hand grasping at her waist, her arm lifted and her hand nowhere in reach.

His hand lurched back in haste. "Oh, fine. I'm fine," Elias said airily, placing all his concentrations into tugging his trouser legs free of the thorns that had them.

"I don't know if this is a usual activity for you and your family of florists," he said quickly, to move past that, "but I'm not sure this is exactly the best time for rosebush-diving." He wasn't sure it was even light enough yet that she'd see his grin, and know undoubtedly that he was teasing. He hoped so. But oh well; it would be awkward enough either way.

---