Intruder Alert || Zeke

Dary looked up and him and cocked her head slightly to the side, having heard what he had been mumbling under his breath. She hadn’t pictured Zeke as a rat or weasel in the slightest; she was thinking definitely more of a pit-bull. Something vicious and angry and liable to rip things like havana brown cats to shreds with their teeth. The more that she thought about it, the more that her thoughts digressed and for a moment, she was imagining the pit-bull pulling her apart in her cat form. The very mental image that she had in her head was horrifying and for a moment she had to hold her breath so that she wouldn’t explode and start crying all over the carpet. The thought of her animagus form being in any type of danger made her ill. It was all that she had left to keep herself sane sometimes. Slowly, she managed to take a calming breath and felt the air rush into her lungs. She lifted her hand to the hem of the shirt that she was wearing and began running her fingertips over it, feeling for any broken threads. Her thoughts seemed to be whirling a million miles a minute until he broke the silence by stating that he was no longer the vicious animal that he had once been, ”Owl. Observant and diligent. Wise and-” She paused, looking up at him and meeting his eyes for just a moment before blushing and looking away, ”Skeptical.” That was what she thought that he would be. It suited him when she said it, it almost made her believe that there was more to him than what she knew of him before. But only time would tell.

Darcy felt her eyebrows contract at the thought of her OCD being anything other than a troubling nightmare. She couldn’t imagine that Zeke actually thought that it was a benefit. In fact, she could see nothing in her eyes that would make what she was going through a good thing for her or for society. She wasn’t nearly bothered by the fact that he was insulting the muggle institution of physiatrics, she too had found it to be ridiculous. She stood there for a moment, chewing on the bottom of her lip, searching for the right words to say to make him understand, but she wasn’t sure that there were any, ”I understood what you meant,” Dars said quietly as she laced her fingers between one another and then shook her head, ”It’s hard for them to understand that just because something is different doesn’t mean that it is wrong. It’s hard for all of us-” It was an honest answer, one that she had thought about a lot since she had been diagnosed. People hated what they didn’t understand; they were afraid of it, and so they moved to destroy it, or like Zeke said, try and cure it. That being said, she still didn’t seen the beauty of her problem, ”You know, muggles and wizards alike.” She made sure to blanket everyone and then offered him a weak smile. She could see that he was honestly trying; he was being sincere and relatively sweet. It was endearing in a strange sort of way. Darcy thought that she was beginning to trust the snake that had once nearly strangled the life out of her.

She was slightly confused when he mentioned the match; not a particular fan of Quidditch, Darcy didn’t understand the appeal and often forgot how much time and effort people put into seeing the sport. In a few seconds it dawned on her that she had indeed probably been at the match that he was talking about. After all, The Bash had said something about it being the World Cup Semi-Finals, ”Yeah, we wen’t to the match. The...erm...Semi-Finals, I think,” She said, unsure of what that meant. She hadn’t paid much attention to the game, but instead tried to keep herself entertained by the people that were around them in the stands, ”Brad wanted to parade around the fairgrounds,” She said with a tiny giggle as she thought back to that day, ”He loves people looking at him,” She then realized that he must have had a reason for asking her if she was there, ”Were you there too?” She turned her head slightly to the side as she asked.

He thanked her and she placed her hand on top of his, trying her best to be comforting. It was something that her mother had done to her over the years. Whenever the compulsions were too much, her mum would put her hand over her daughters and give her a reassuring squeeze. It always seemed to make things better. She looked up and found that he was staring at her and she felt her face grow warm, ’Is there something on my face?’ She wondered as she reached up and touched her cheek with her free hand. Then he laughed and she immediately withdrew her hand like a skittish animal. He asked about boys, ”I...” Darcy was dreading answering this question, ”I ahem-” She took in a deep breath, trying to get her bearings but finding it increasingly difficult. She realized that he was smiling, but it didn’t do anything for her nerves. She was still a wreck about the question at hand, ”I’ve never really-” Reaching up she grabbed her necklace and spun the chain in response, ”I don’t know many boys.” There, that was as close to an answer as he was going to get.

Darcy wasn’t sure what to say to him. It seemed as if he was developing his very own sense of self, something that he had been lacking in the six years that she had known him. Instead of acting on the group-thinking of the Slytherin House, he was almost developing his own identity. This made Darcy smile slightly. The right side of her mouth pulled itself up into a half-smile the longer that she stared at him. She knew not to interrupt him; he seemed so focus on spilling everything that was bothering him, so she did what she did best: She listened. Dars nodded along at the appropriate times, catching his glance when he let out a deep sigh and then offering him a comforting smile as he continued down the path of exploring human beings as a whole. Now this she was interested in. The final word of his little speech hung in the air between them and for a moment Darcy wasn’t sure if she should speak at all. Everything that he had been saying was true, surely he knew that. She looked all around the room, her eyes scanning the mess and her body starting to feel the strain of anxiety. She knew that talking might help get her mind off what she was thinking so she took a deep breath, ”People are afraid of emotions,” She said after an entire minute had passed, ”Name one person that’s not afraid of sadness or even love-” She said and then furrowed her brow, ”I think that everyone’s a little afraid to be human because being human implies vulnerability. That’s why people - especially wizards - are so caught up in their own worlds and groups.” It was a lacking explanation and Darcy knew it, but it was a little glimpse into the way that her mind was working now; what she was thinking, ”I guess you’re just starting to see things the way that they really are,” She said, commenting on his previous statement that he was beginning to change his point of view. It was refreshing to hear that for Dars; perhaps not everyone was without hope.

Jaques St. Pierre sounded like a familiar name, but Darcy was having a hard time actually placing it. She bit down on her lip, trying not to look like she was having too much of a hard time. He said something about the French National’s Booth and she nodded, shrugging her shoulders, ”I’m sure that was lovely,” She said, offering him another weak smile. She had no idea what that must have been like...nor did she really have any interest in such things. She had been perfectly happy sitting near the top of the stands with Brad and laughing and talking the whole time - well, the whole time that Brad wasn’t caught up in the match. He informed her that he had seen her and she felt her cheeks flush slightly pink, ”Merlin, I’m sure it couldn’t have been me. There were loads of people there and-” Zeke called her beautiful and for a second she felt like she was going to vomit all over his bed. There was no way that the girl that he had seen had been her. No way in the world. There was an awkward silence between them for a moment; a moment where Darcy knotted her fingers in her hair and then smoothed it down again, trying to get all of the loose strands to lay flat. She was nervous, she could feel it in her bones. What was he trying to say to her? ”I don’t think that you saw the right girl,” She shook her head at his formal compliment. There was no way. Of the tens of thousands of people that were there, Darcy would have been the least noticeable in her opinion.

She saw him raising his eyebrows at her and she felt her cheeks starting to heat up again. This was the same look that she got from Bradley all the time when she told him that she didn’t want to date anyone. The classic male response, ”Thanks-” She muttered about his respectability comment. She wasn’t sure what he had meant by it, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know either. There were some things that were just better left unsaid in her opinion, ”A boyfriend? Well-” Dars was going to try and lie and make up something, but she knew that it was probably a lost cause, ”Never actually had one of those either. No one really wants to date the crazy cat lady with severe compulsions,” She breathed and reached up to fix her necklace again, ”How many girls before Bellatrix?” She asked curiously, wondering just who Zeke Maxwell really was.

She was honestly surprise that he didn’t put up a fight about Darcy talking about the wizarding world the way that she was. She had thought for sure that he would be a little distraught that things weren’t always as he had believed. However, based on the reaction that she was getting now, she was beginning to imagine that he had been fighting with these very interests since the beginning. Perhaps Zeke had known all along that there was an error in his ways but had chosen to ignore it because of his duty to his family and bloodline. Darcy bit down on her lip, completely lost in her own thoughts for a moment. It was only then that she realized that his tone was one of annoyance. She raised her head, her eyes semi-wide as she looked him, wondering what she had done to deserve his annoyance, but then she saw the weak smile that was on his face. It appeared as if he wasn’t annoyed with Darcy but with the situation in general, something that she could most certainly understand, ”You know, most of the Hufflepuffs and Muggle-born students would call the Slytherins just that: animals.” She said with a furrowing of her brow. She had heard them called worse things over the years; people became bitter when they were picked on for so long. But Dars had tried to never stray there. She had tried to keep her head down and keep to herself, hoping that they would leave her alone. But just like every other Muggle-Born in the school, she had no such luck. She laughed at his use of the muggle analogy and then brushed some of her hair behind her ear, hoping that it wasn’t too messed up, ”Where did you learn that?” She asked curiously, knowing that not many people at this school knew what that actually meant, but Zeke had used it in the correct context.

Zeke called her out on not knowing who St. Pierre was and she managed a weak smile, ”I’m sorry, I don’t really-” She laughed, ”-follow quidditch.” She had never much been a fan, something that the Bash always tried to get to actually understand. She was pretty sure that she had been taught the rules over thirty times and still, she didn’t understand. Sports weren’t generally her thing. When she was younger, her mother had tried to get her to play football - what the american’s called soccer. She had been awful at it, and every time that she had been remotely dirty, Dars would sit down and begin to cry. It had been a disaster all over the place. Since then, Darcy had tried to avoid sports at all costs, but she knew that she had an obligation to Brad, so she often went with him to the matches. She saw him observing her playing with her hair, but instead of saying something about it, he continued as if nothing was wrong. ‘Maybe he just didn’t notice that you were doing it?’ Shocked for a moment, she dropped her hand to her lap, even though she knew that most of it wasn’t flat. He said that she looked stunning and Darcy felt her cheeks going even more red, ”That’s ridiculous.” She said as she raised both of her eyebrows, ”Brad-” She was going to say that he had been with a bunch of girls, but the truth of the matter was that she had stayed close to him the entire time and he had always been aware of where she was. They were like brother and sister and he had promised to protect her while they were there, so it was likely that she had been the only girl with him, ”Well thank you. The summers with Brad always do me good.” It was good for Darcy to get out of her house and away from her parents. Sometimes they could be a little overbearing. She seemed to blossom when she was with Brad.

She finally found the clasp on her necklace and was about to slide it to the back of her neck when Zeke’s hand touched hers and he gave her a squeeze. Her head snapped up almost immediately and she stared at him in awe. He slowly lowered her hand and held it somewhere in the middle, between them. She felt the need to pull away and go back to her necklace, but managed to stop herself by focusing on his hand enclosed around hers, ”It wasn’t that hard. When you get obsessive about something like I do, it just sort of...happened one day,” She answered honestly, trying to figure out why he was still holding on to her hand. Was he just going to hold her there forever? She bit down on her lip, ”I’m not sure that there’s a guy out there for me, but thanks for the reassurance.” She managed to say, gently pulling her hand and putting it onto her lap. Her eyes averted themselves and began staring at the wall. Boys were a touchy subject for her, ”How long have you been studying muggles?” She asked, tilting her head slightly when she saw a record cover on his desk.

Darcy wasn’t sure what to say to him; it seemed odd that he would be admitting his transgressions now. What did he have to gain by telling her that he was sorry for what he had done except for patching up the idea in his mind? She bit down on her lip, trying to hide her surprise for the sudden apology that she was getting from Zeke Maxwell, ”A lot of people treated me the way that you had. I don’t hold it against you personally,” She said, her voice soft and rather weak. It was the truth; she had spent her entire life living in fear that people would tease her about the way that she was. And Zeke had done it, but so had loads of other people. They did it because they couldn’t understand her and sometimes she couldn’t blame them, she was a bit of an odd ball. She saw his expression change with her laughter, and for a moment she was sure that he was going to throw up or something, which only made her laugh a little bit harder. Zeke Maxwell was certainly an odd ball, ”Training for what?” Dars asked as she cocked her head to the side, ”Your friend-” She paused for a moment, thinking about what he was saying, ”Was she muggleborn? Or half-blood?” She couldn't figure out why Zeke would be hanging around someone like that with his reputation on the line, ”Those are the only people who really understand the muggle world. Did she take you to the little crepe shop that was-” Darcy cut herself off, realizing that she was talking far too much. Far too often. She didn’t want Zeke to think that she was a chatterbox. Slowly she laced her fingers in-between each other and went back to keeping her mouth pressed close and her tongue on the top of her soft palette.

Darcy couldn’t imagine why her not liking Quidditch would make anyone sad; there were loads of people in the world who didn’t like Quidditch. In fact, she could think off two off the top of her head. She had just never been too entertained by the sport; she was more of a stay at home and draw or read and make tea kind of girl, ”I’m sure it’s lovely,” Dars said with a slight shrug, hoping that she wasn’t offending him by her lack-luster attitude toward the whole thing. Zeke said something about romance and she felt her face contort immediately. She couldn’t imagine being anything other than friends with Brad; he was like her big brother, he had been since her first year at Hogwarts, ”Not at all,” She answered honestly and shrugged her shoulders. She couldn’t figure out why he was so concerned with her relationship with The Bash, ”It’s not that difficult to understand. Sometimes people just need someone to protect them. And then you singularly bond over that aspect of your relationship and it doesn’t need to be anything else,” Her voice trailed off somewhere into the silence and she finally unlaced her fingers, starting to feel at ease talking about something that she was comfortable with. She knew her relationship with Brad inside and out and it was one of the most important things to her; so that was where she felt some relief.

She mangaed to smile delicately at Zeke’s question. He might have thought that there was someone out there for everybody, but Dars thought that she knew better. Sometimes people just weren’t meant to be with another person. And Darcy knew that she was like that; doomed to a life alone with her sketch book, her cat animagus, and luke-warm tea, ”I’m sure there’s someone out there for you. You’re a nice guy,” Darcy said, hoping that she hadn’t begun to worry him about something that he needen’t worry about. He was perfectly normal unlike here. There was a very real possibility that the girl that he was looking for was just a few steps away; he probably just hadn’t met her yet. After asking about the muggles, she knew that it was probably a bad move. Zeke seemed to get a little anxious talking about it; and she could understand why, ”It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” She breathed as she stood up and crossed to the dresser, picking up the record and flipping it over in her hands. She read some of the song titles and recognized them from the radio during the summer, ”Funny, that’s the same thing that I said about the wizarding world when I first found out about it. I wanted to know everything. Couldn’t imagine that there was something so-” She paused, looking up from the words and at Zeke, her eyes bright with sudden excitement, ”Magical out there.”

Darcy started laughing as Zeke attempted to explain the muggle doctors. It was like watching someone try and explain something in a foreign language - horribly wrong, but nonetheless amusing to watch. But she couldn’t let him struggle for too long before she really began to feel bad for him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t understand the muggle world; he hadn’t been brought up like she had, ”They’re called doctors.” She explained as she reached up and pushed some of her hair away from her eyes so that she could see him better. He tone was one of amusement and even though she was being quiet like she normally was, the shift into talking about the things that she knew most about seemed to make her a little bit more confident, ”Your friend’s mum is probably a surgeon. They operate on patients and use those little knives-” Darcy made a cutting motion as if she was cutting a steak, ”and they’re called scalpels.” She loved explaining about her world to other people and for a moment, it didn’t matter that Zeke was a pureblood or that he was the guy that had made her life a living hell for the past six years; right now he was just someone who didn’t know as much as he should about her world and she wanted to show him as much as she could, ”No no no-” She giggled, ”Not croupe. Crepe.” She looked at him and he looked like a kid in a candy shop, all lit up with excitement. It was rather infectious, if she was being honest. All of a sudden, she wanted to jump up and down and explain everything that there ever was to know about muggles, ”They’re pancakes. But thinner. Filled with fruit almost always. Fluffy and delicious and-” She shook her head as she started laughing. Darcy was unable to take anything seriously when he was looking at her like she was showing him the light or something.

”You don’t sound crazy.” Darcy assured him as she crossed her legs the other way and scooted toward the middle of the bed, trying her best to get comfortable. His very blunt description of niceties in the Slytheirn house seemed to surprise her, even though she had all but expected that to be the case. Darcy had just never thought about it in such blunt terms before. It was odd to see the world from Zeke’s perspective, that much was for sure.

Darcy wasn’t someone who regularly held grudges; sure, she was angry sometimes, but that didn’t mean that she held it against people forever. It wasn’t in her nature. Much like the cat that she turned into as her animagus form, she was curious about things that she had never explored before. She always wanted to know more. She wanted to know why people were the way that they were...what made them be that way. She bit down on her lip, unsure of what to say to Zeke that would make this better...or fix the rift that she seemed to create between them. But he looked back and began talking again and Darcy all but lost that train of thought, ”You’re telling me that you guys still buy each other?” She asked, leaning forward and pressing her hands into her thighs as she did, ”That’s so...not groovy. Who’re your parent’s buying you? Your French friend?” She shook her head, terrified by the prospect but strangely curious about Zeke’s prospects. She assumed that every pureblood family probably did it, which meant his would be no exception. She bit down on her lip, if the entire world was doing it; if that had been the case, she would end up with no one at all. Lucky for her, she lived in a world that wasn’t like Zeke’s, ”It’s heaven-” She added to the end of his analogy and then offered him a weak smile, ”It’s a match made in heaven. Well, in this case, I guess it’s more like a match made in hell.”

She stared down at the record, trying to figure out why there seemed to be horozontal scratches running down its length. And that was when Zeke explained. She felt her lips curl up into a giant smile, ”You’re telling me that you’ve been dragging a needle down this record?” She laughed as she walked back over to the bed, carrying the circular record with her. She sat down and held the record out to him, ”You’ve probably ruined it by now.” She commented, but kept a light smile on her face, ”It goes like this.” She picked up his hand, ”Pretend your hand is a needle-” She commented as she moved his hand around the record, simulating going in-between the grooves that were in the black surface, ”The needle goes in those tiny spaces, then goes through the record player and out the amplification system. You can’t just-” She started laughing again and dropped the record on the bed, ”You can/t just scratch it. Doesn’t work like that.”

Darcy wasn’t sure why Zeke’s eyes were all lit up, but suddenly he was like a small child on Christmas morning when she began explaining all the things that she knew about the muggle world. He seemed like he was going to explode with excitement, ”Oh God, no.” Darcy laughed a little bit harder as she thought about what Zeke was actually talking about. The poor pure-blood had it all mixed up, that one was for sure, ”Those are called staples.” She corrected as she reached up and ran her fingers through her dark hair, ”And they come out of what we call a stapler.” She simulated the motion that was needed to staple a stack of papers, trying to get Zeke to understand even more fully. She actually found it pretty funny that he didn’t know a lot about what she did and vise versa; it seemed as if they both knew things that were interesting about the others’ way of life, ”And nothing. You’d better close your mouth, you’re going to start drooling on your pillow.” Darcy giggled as she picked up Zeke’s pillow from the top of the bed and placed it in her lap so that she was more comfortable. Then slowly, she laced her fingers in-between one another, trying to keep them from absentmindedly wandering to her hair or her necklace again. For some reason she didn’t want Zeke to see her all...compulsive and what not, ”They’re really really good. You’ll have to have your friend take you the next time that the pair of you are out on a date!” Her voice was cheerful.

The immediate tone shift was obvious in his voice and for a moment Darcy was confused. She hadn’t expected him to be so whole-heartedly denouncing his family and the role that they had played in his life; then again, he really had seemed to change and was beginning to see things in a more...impartial light. Or at least that was the way that it seemed to Dars. She could only imagine what he meant by demeaning, ”I’m glad my parents don’t have to auction me off. ‘Ten pounds for the lanky brunette with severe compulsions!’” She said, lowering her voice, attempting to sound somewhat like her father, ”Ten pounds would be a miracle.” She was trying to make a joke out of the whole thing, but the truth of the matter was that Darcy had never felt like she was particularly wanted. She was the black sheep of her family, she was the black sheep of Hogwarts, and she was also the black sheep of Hufflepuff. It seemed as if nothing was really going her way and there wasn’t much that she could do to change her fate. She was stuck the way that she was, ”Church.” She cut in immediately as he started talking about the place of worship and the Bible. She shook her head, ”My parents used to go. They would drag me along too. But after they found out what I was and what I could do-” She was of course referring to her abilities as a witch, ”We stopped going all together. They’re really beautiful, though.” Darcy had always had a soft spot for looking at churches. There was something about the stained glass windows that always made her want to cry when she looked at them. They were so beautifully crafted. If there was one thing that did draw her to the place of worship, it would have been the art.

She could see that he was blushing, something that she found to actually be rather cute. She had never seen Zeke Maxwell show any signs of vulnerability and now here he was; all but an open book for her to enjoy and learn about, ”Yes! A record player. How do you think that it all works, silly?” She smiled, seeing the recognition on his face as he realized that he had been making a mistake the entire time. She couldn’t think of exactly how to explain the player, ”The one that I’ve got is a rectangular box. It’s got a post for the record to go on right in the center and then the arm with the needle that comes down and plays the actually music-” She was still moving his fingertips around the surface of the record and looked down and smiled, ”It’s in my room. You can see it sometime if you want-” She said, letting go of his hand to push some of her hair behind her ear. She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with delight the longer that they spoke about her world and her passions.

Darcy laughed, realizing that she looked rather silly doing what she was doing, ”Well you have to line up all the papers that you want put together. And then you put it underneath the stapler and press down-” She was still acting out the motions as if she was playing some sort of botched form of charades, ”And then voila! They’re all stuck together. Think of it like an adhesion charm of sorts. Only...it’s tiny and metal and very very muggle-” Dars laughed as she pushed some of her hair behind her ear, hoping that she had gotten that description right. She didn’t want Zeke to think that she was incompetent when she was speaking about her own culture - that would be ridiculous to say the least, ”Delightful is certainly one way to picture it.” She shook her head, ”But it’s nothing compared to Licorice Wands and Lumos that’s for sure.” She shrugged her shoulders, knowing that she loved the wizarding world. It had, after all, offered her a new chance at living her life surrounded by people who seemed to better understand her than the muggle world did. He said something about Rory being like his sister and she could completely understand that. She and Bash were the same way. Dars figured that was the way that the world worked sometimes; there were just people who came into your life to be there for you, ”Sure. I’m sure that The Bash would love to go too-” Darcy said, completely missing his meaning and the fact that he had basically just offered to take her out on a date. Darcy wasn’t very quick on the uptake when it came to those types of things.

Darcy realized a little too late that she had made the mistake of referring to the muggle currency instead of the wizarding one. Sometimes she forgot that everyone here didn’t know how to operate the pound system. It was funny to her really - then again, she didn’t know too much about the wizarding monetary system either, so she figured that the playing field was leveled in that respect, ”Well I’m glad to know that at least someone would buy me-” She joked, knowing full well that none of these things would never happen. For one, she was a muggle born and Zeke would never buy one to begin with and for two, she had no intention of getting herself into a situation in which she needed an arranged marriage. Like she had told herself over and over again as the years passed, she was perfectly happy becoming an old cat woman, ”I dunno-” Dars shrugged her shoulders as he asked her if she still believed that there was a greater power out there, ”I suppose maybe. But I don’t think that he’s so...present in our everyday life, you know?” She shook her head, knowing that this was a silly discussion to get into in the middle of the night, ”Plus, I don’t think that a spirit would let someone have such-” She was about to say have such as awful life as she did, but she shook her head, ”I dunno. I really don’t. Religion’s not really my thing.” She tried to laugh it off, but could feel her heart sinking a little.

”Cars, Zeke, those are cars.” Darcy smiled as she gently let go of his hands and let them fall down to the bed. She knew that she probably shouldn’t have still bee holding on to them, lest either one of them get uncomfortable, ”Assembly line. Car factories? Hullo! Haven’t you heard of any of this stuff?” She asked; knowing full well that he hadn’t. It was something that people often didn’t understand unless they were a part of the culture, ”Sure, I could bring it to the Great Hall and we could-” It was then that she realized the flaw in her plan. The Great Hall was a very public place and if Zeke was afraid to be seen with her in the comforts of his own common room, there would be no way that he would want to be seen with her outside of his own room. She bit down on her lip, trying not to get down about it, ”My dad is a Structural Architect and my mom teaches Biostatstics at Oxford. That’s a muggle university. I’ve got a sister who’s into floral arrangements and she’s just married this bloody awful guy who’s a Doctor...you know, a surgeon like we talked about before.” She added, smiling slightly, ”What do your parents do?”