May 1882 - Hogwarts

yeah, life is like a first kiss
you don't know how long it's gonna last
all you get is what you get
and it gets real really fast

Win was feeling a little nostalgic about the approaching end of her Hogwarts career. It felt like the end of a book she wouldn't be able to open again, or read again for the first time, and that was something worth her attention. There were still a few more weeks yet and NEWTs to survive, but she was keenly aware of the impending changes. There were only so many evening walks a girl could take on this side of the walk left.

She was meandering in the warm evening air around the end of the lake itself, near the docks and the boathouse. She hadn't been able to find Gus to coerce outside with her. Things weren't as awkward between them as she would have guessed, given their history. Teenage hormones were a wild ride and Winnie, for one, was curious to dive deeper, but she knew Gus was not the one to do it with. It was good though, they they could remain friends, really good friend still in the aftermath. She realized she didn't need the romance everyone talked about, which was oddly freeing.

Looking up at the castle across the grounds, windows starting to light up as the night started to fall, she sighed, content in the moment. Sighing again, she slipped off her shoes and stockings and hiked up her skirts, wading into the cool water of the lake. It was something she'd done her entire time here at Hogwarts. Maybe it was just a relic of her childhood, but she wasn't ready to give it up. There was something soothing about the sand beneath her feet and the water lapping at her skin. She would miss this in her big adult life.

Something brushed up against her leg unexpectedly and Winnie squeaked in surprise, hauling herself out of the lake itself hastily, which was of course when she noticed somebody coming her way. Naturally at the most embarrassing moment. "Mr. Dempsey," Winnie huffed out, skirts still in her hands as she looked to where she'd been standing in the water. "Something startled me." She admitted with a faint blush.

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Don Juan Dempsey

  

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Don Juan was doing a spot of reconnaissance this evening. He'd been dared by one of the other boys in his dorm to steal one of the ridiculously-oversized vegetables from the groundskeeper's garden, which was proving to be more involved than he had at first imagined. The groundskeeper had a mean hound, and Don Juan didn't trust his charmwork to be able to put the thing to sleep before it caused enough of a commotion to alert the groundskeeper. But he wasn't the sort to turn down a dare just because it was difficult, so he was walking along the edge of the lake — a route he had often seen the old man taking with his dog in the evenings — and keeping his eyes open for anything that would help him brainstorm a suitable solution. So far he had considered and discarded anything that shielded him personally — even an invisibility charm wouldn't fool a dog's nose. He had to do something to make the dog like him... or to temporarily get him out of the picture and away from the groundskeeper's hut.

He hadn't expected company. He certainly hadn't expected half-naked company. The way she'd come splashy out of the water was more silly than sexy, so his expression was mostly amused, but it wasn't as though he hadn't noticed that he could see her bare legs.

"Are you in need of rescuing, Miss Moony?" he teased. "I've been practicing my heroics."

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MJ made this <3

"Have you?" Winnie mused, a sly smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She looked back at the cool waters of the lake, wading out a little bit again now that she couldn't see anything squirming around or about to bite her toes. Win tugged her skirts up a little more to keep them from the water, not even remotely worried about how that would look. In a few weeks time she might even see half of her peers from Hogwarts again. She also highly doubted Mr. Dempsey would care. Any exchange they'd had before this was obviously flirtatious on her end and she hadn't been disappointed by his reactions.

She eyed him carefully, splashing around in the water playfully. "Would you save me from the squid if it grabbed me then?" She was amused by the thought on the surface, but it was slightly terrifying. Still it was all she could think of off the top of her head.

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Don Juan raised his eyebrows as she turned back towards the water, skirts hitched high. Was she doing that for his benefit? Perhaps not — she'd had her shoes and stockings off before he'd wandered along — but as he watched her splash he thought it must be at least a little bit for him. He smirked at her and edged a bit closer to the water's edge, though he was still fully dressed and no intention of following her in... yet, anyway.

"I would," he agreed. "But perhaps best not to tease him, hm?" The look that accompanied the question implied that he wasn't thinking much about the squid at all, and was instead offering a lighthearted warning about a different sort of teasing entirely.

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MJ made this <3

"But what if I have never shied away from a little teasing?" Winnie pinned him with a flirtatious smile. "Would that doom me for calling it upon myself?" She had never been shy, in any respect, but she wasn't sure what her goal was here either. She was disassociating from the end of Hogwarts and thinking that she ought to enjoy her last few days at the school. How she enjoyed them, well, that remained to be seen.

She pulled her hems up a little higher and waded out a little further in the water, eyeing Mr. Dempsey as she did. She was only up to mid-calf, but her skirts fell just higher still as she clearly did not want to get them soaked.

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She certainly didn't shy away from teasing, that much was true. The only thing saving the situation from being outright pornography by the standards of the Hogwarts matrons, should any of them chance to spy her in this position, was that the lake was murky enough to obscure her calves below the waterline, so he was only catching a thin glimpse of them rather than half her leg at once. But the height she'd already hoisted her skirts to made his imagination run wild with what he might glimpse if she continued a little higher. He hadn't actually seen much of women's bodies, up to this point. He'd grown up with sisters, but they'd been separated from the nursery and into distinct rooms well before anyone's body had started to mature. He'd caught glimpses of other boys changing, stealing long looks when they were unlikely to notice, but he'd yet to actually see a girl's thigh. Or any other intimate part of one — though he had managed to touch a girl's breast while kissing her last summer, the interaction had been too brief and too dark for him to be much of an expert on the subject.

"I'd say you're definitely walking into danger," he said, tone playful. "Danger of soaking your skirts at the very least." (Was he trying to goad her into increasing the window between the waterline and the bottom of her skirts a little? Maybe). "But I'd do my best to rescue you, even if you deserved everything you got."

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MJ made this <3

Amused by his answer, Winnie took another step deeper, hoisting the bulk of her skirts into her arms, rather than just gathered into her hands, hems now well above her knees. "A little wetness never hurt anybody." Her double-entendre was likely lost on him, but she made herself laugh anyway. "How chivalrous of you."

The water was chilly and she was starting to think maybe she ought to rethink this, but she was having too much fun. "What if I like a little danger, too?" Winnie certainly hadn't shied away from the teasing and she didn't mind putting herself out there. There was always an enticing little thrill that accompanied causing trouble. She probably shouldn't go inviting it into her life, not when the best part of it was about to start, but she was still learning the ins and outs of everything.

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The double-meaning of the word wet was indeed lost on him, but her tone wasn't. She laughed like it was a dirty joke and he found himself grinning too, keen to feel he was in on it rather than on the outside. The farther out she ventured the more conspicuous he felt for not having moved yet. If her wading out into the lake was a metaphor for other kinds of adventurous behavior, he didn't want to give them impression that he was content to be left behind... even though he certainly hadn't had any intention of going swimming when he'd set out to walk the shores of the lake this afternoon. So he dropped down into the grass and set about removing his shoes and socks, then to cuffing his pant legs up to his mid-calf.

"What about trouble, do you like that too?" he bantered back. "The sort of trouble we'd be in if one of the matrons saw us?"

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MJ made this <3

Winnie grinned, obviously pleased, to see she had coerced Mr. Demspey to join her. "Trouble?" Winnie asked innocently, though it was hard to keep the smirk off her features. She wasn't in the mood to get expelled before graduating, but she was in the mood for some good trouble. "I prefer the secret sort where we don't get caught." The best kind of trouble really. It had every potential to be real trouble, but she was just young and dumb enough to think that it wouldn't apply to her. There was an invincibility in youthful folly that Winnie fully planned to exploit.

"And you, do you like trouble?" Winnie asked as she swished around in the water, holding her skirts tightly. She wouldn't mind getting the hems wet, but has deep as she was now, she might sink of they got soaked.

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"Miss Moony, you insult me," he returned playfully. "Of course I like trouble." His detention record spoke for itself, and over the past few years he'd become something of a professional at knowing exactly how much he could push one of the professors or staff members before he got into any real trouble. She knew that already, though; she wouldn't be teasing him with her skirts if he wasn't the sort to play into it.

He left his shoes behind and went into the shallows, feeling the mud between his toes. It was a sensation that was at once wholly innocent, conjuring up memories of a childhood spent trudging through the wilderness at the edge of the grounds, and strangely illicit. Maybe it was just the idea of having anything between his toes, given how buttoned-up the staff preferred everyone to be all the time. He wasn't going to be able to go out as deep as her, unless he was willing to trudge back into the castle with wet pant legs clinging conspicuously to his calves. There simply wasn't a way for him to pull his trousers up the way she had... but he was loathe to let her be the one who had been more daring, of the two of them.

"Y'know, I think Professor Ruskin approves of secret trouble," he joked as an idea occurred to him. He shifted his weight and pulled his wand from his pocket. "Otherwise I can't think why he would have taught us this." And then he cast the very spell they'd learned earlier that week in Charms class — conjuring a dense fog cloud, to keep them concealed from prying eyes.

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MJ made this <3

Winnie's mouth dropped as Mr. Dempsey cast a wonderful example of a recent charm they'd learned. "And here I thought the boathouse was close enough to be out of sight." She laughed, expression changing to one of amused delight rather than surprise. Win didn't exactly know what she was going for here. She had always just sort of invited trouble to her and clearly Mr. Dempsey was no different.

She waded back toward him, as he was clearly at a disadvantage in those trousers, though she didn't drop her skirts any as the water line exposed more of her legs. Nobody could see them now anyway or so she had to hope. Actually she could hardly see Mr. Dempsey through his conjured fog. so she wandered closer still, coming to a stop only an arm's length away. "Now what?" A quirked eyebrow accompanied the sly smile that curled her lips.

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She'd pieced together what he'd been intending with the fog right away, which felt gratifying; she was also keeping of thinking them out of sight. "Angles, Miss Moony," he teased, though she probably had the right of it. The boathouse would have sheltered them from the castle doors themselves, and the chances of this area being approached from another direction at this time of day was unlikely. Not impossible, though; he'd been wandering the shore of the lake, and she had too. They might not have been the only ones. Better if they had some audible notice of approaching visitors before they could be seen, either way.

"Now anything," he said suggestively. He didn't really know what he was doing here, but he was hoping that if Miss Moony started something then he'd be quick to figure it out as he went. Did she know what she was doing? It was hard to tell — she certainly wasn't as shy as girls were allegedly supposed to be. "Would you... maybe feel a little safer from the squid if I were..." he took two small steps closer to her, which brought them close enough that there would have been rumors flying and house points deducted if someone could see them, but he still hadn't touched her yet. "...here?"

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MJ made this <3