Rhett couldn't help but notice the way she crossed her ankles. There was nothing remarkable about the gesture—he'd seen women sit like that all his life, but when Tabitha did it, it stirred something low and restless in him. The simple act drew his eye and held it, as though every small motion she made was done with some purpose that maybe she wasn't even aware off, and that he certainly wasn't meant to name. When she turned to face him, her body angled just so to his liking, it was a movement that his mind tried to twist into an invitation. His breath caught, his collar suddenly too tight, and the air felt heavy. He should have looked away, but he couldn't. Not from Tabitha, not when she looked the very image of something he would have carved from stone himself if he'd had such a skill.

Every primal instinct told him to reach out, to brush his thumb along the soft heat of her cheek, to feel the warmth of her skin beneath his hand, to let his fingers trail up to the curve of her neck and the delicate shape of her ear and to toy softly with every part of her that he touched. He didn't move, but the wanting of it burn through him all the same, his pride and what was left of his dignity kept his hands restrained, and both were failing him quickly. When she asked her question, he furrowed his brow some in thought, and tapped his fingers on the back of the bench to occupy them momentarily. It was a bit of an open question and he wasn't entirely sure about the specifics she wanted, if any.

“Well, from my understanding it's a lot like Hogwarts is some ways, and very different in others. What exactly were you wanting to know?” As he spoke, the fingers which had been tapping that back of the bench had moved ever so slightly, subconsciously even, to gently play with a loose strand of her hair. It was such a subtle movement that no one looking at them would have been able to detect it, in truth, Rhett wasn't fully aware he was even doing it himself. His eyes however, were locked on the features of her face. They had adopted a strange type of gaze as the auror in him took over, and he studied her with greater precision. The green of his iris became sharper and more vivid, and his eyes took on the appearance of highly polished glass as that shot from one point of her face to another. Rhett had looked at her many times, but never like this nor with such wolfish intensity.

The fingers that played with her hair released it, and his hand moved to touch her face. The warmth of his hand pressed against the side of her neck softly, tenderly. His large thumb extended to run nearly the entire length of her jawline. Her features felt so small in his grasp, like a doll given life. The hand slowly pulled his had away and returned to the bench. He offered no apology for what he had done, nor did he cover it with some white lie—that simply wasn't Rhett and he wasn't made that way. “Please, tell me what you'd like to know.” It was a request not only to continue the conversation but also to break away from the part of him the wanted to pursue other avenues.