Don't be afraid, we'll make it out of this mess.

‘Dangerous’ Dai Llewellyn had been an icon. Llewellyn had been a name famed, written in stone, one to remember - one to fear and revere. Upon his death, it stole the smile from warm faces and brought a solemn expression in its place, pressing it into the cheeks of those whose tongues were suddenly fervent with apologies - as though they were responsible - and condolences, sympathies that the girls didn’t need but their wasp of a mother lapped up like a kitten with milk. The girls wanted their father, Grace especially. He had never cared about the Lycanthropy. He still wanted her to hit the big time. He’d wanted her to be special in everyone’s eyes; not just his own.

When he was alive, they had their own box in the Millennium Stadium. When he was alive, she wouldn’t have needed someone else’s charity. When he was alive, they went to a game every weekend. When he was alive there was a person in the world that actually cared about her, genuinely. When it came to love, Dai was fervent and steadfast. Jasmine.... in her eyes, Grace had never been worthy. She had once - when she was cherubic, pure and human. Now, now she was a monster, unworthy of something Jasmine believed she could never feel. She was wrong, of course. The girl yearned for it, more than anything in the world.

In a vase on the table arms length away from her there was a small bouquet of daisies she imagined a lover had fetched for the person whose affection he craved, so. They were vibrant, larger than that which grew on lawns much to the aggravation of Muggles and Wizards alike.

Grace sighed, a bittersweet smile tugging at her lips as she turned over the napkin she’d placed on the table. She peeked up at Romeo and bit the inside of her cheek.

It would be fun.

It would.

It would be fun.

So go.

“I’d love to.” She confessed.

Her eyes drifted back to the vase and she reached, lifting one of the daisies out of the water. She turned it over in her hand, feeling the strength of the stem, before bending it a little. She looked up again, a stronger smile lapping at her lips.

“Can I have your hand?” She asked, twisting the daisy between her thumb and forefinger.

Romeo examined her face as she seemed to be debating whether to go, he was almost certain that she would but was happily assured upon her response saying that she would love to go to the game. Admittedly the Slytherin was curious how it'd play out with them supporting different teams. He suspected a bit of playful banter, some rubbing it in his face if the Catapults won... How he would incorporate a kiss into the date could be difficult but not impossible. Nothing was impossible for Romeo when it came to girls.

His dark, mysterious eyes traced her fingers as they plucked one of the engorgiated daisies from the vase not too far from them. Curious as to what she was going to do he gave her his hand upon her command. Secretly he was hoping it wasn't going to be some Girly, tying the flower around his wrist to 'show their bond', but even so he feigned a convincing smile - romance glittering across his eyes.

Something that drew him to older girls was their maturity, the more sophisticated enjoyment that was received on a date. If he ever did date a younger girl that it meant Romeo had to act very cute and romantic rather than sultry and devilishly handsome, however it seemed, judging by Grace's character, that he was have to place the pair together.

Grace was simple. A simple creature that was unlucky in the point of fact that a lot of awful things had happened to her in her few short years of life. She’d never, ever imagined having to suffer from Lycanthropy as a magically literate child. She’d always thought to herself that she’d become some sort of advocate and help them get the rights they were owed. As it was, she didn’t have a choice in that now but the difference was that the voice she’d had as a full-blooded human being had been taken away from her the night the Werewolf had sunk its teeth into her flesh. The wound still ached, even years later. It wasn’t something that salve or potions could soothe. It was angry and red near constantly and ferocious when the moon drifted closer to its full.

Happiness was what she sought. Part of her knew better than to trust so readily in the Slytherin before her but she naively saw no danger in someone who had presented nothing but an offer of friendship and extension of his own luxury to her. It had been so long since she’d seen a Quidditch game live. She had been young enough to still sit on her father’s shoulders, her height not being enough for her to see over the edge of her own accord. Whenever the Catapults scored he used to throw her into the air and dance about, catching her and cradling her close to his chest as she was brought back down to earth.

Grace looked up from the smiling bud of the daisy and tugged a little on the petals. They didn’t come away in her fingers but nevertheless seemed to loosen around the middle. She looked up; a smile of her own rising to her lips as she saw Romeo had complied with her wish.

She brought his hand forward, holding her own beneath his. She smoothed back the cuff of his shirt and placed the flower against the vein of his wrist. She curled the stem around to meet the other side before covering it over, concealing it from view with her palm.

“Watch,” she whispered, her smile growing stronger on her lips as she tapped her fingers against the jutting, connecting bone of his wrist.

When she took her hand away, the daisy was gone and readily she showed her palms to him, even going so far as to touch at her forearms to show she’d not concealed it in the sagging sleeve of her forest green cardigan. She licked her lips and brought her hands forward; reaching for Romeo’s other hand. She turned it over and pinched a little bit in the middle of his palm. Then, with a flourish, she pulled the daisy, seemingly out of his hand, and held it up in front of him. It was pure and perfect without a single thing wrong with it - as though it had been plucked from the ground that morning.

Grace laughed a little despite herself and popped it back in the vase.

“A little bit of magic,” she said by way of explanation. “Some people can keep things in their skin. In the place between their muscle and the surface of their skin so it’s still visible to the naked eye. A lot of powerful wizards keep their familiars there in order to make sure they’re safe.”

Romeo let Grace show him her little magic trick. It seemed to him like some sort of muggle magician's act and he was her fabulous assistant. A thought struck him as she continued on with her act: was Grace muggle born? Or from a muggle family? The Slytherin was soon beginning to regret ever approaching her now. First she showed him some magic daisy trick, that wasn't sexy in the slightest and now the idea that she was muggle born was beginning to pollute his mind.

How was he going to find out without expressing his distrust and dislike towards muggle borns? Romeo wasn't a prejudice person altogether but when your parents look down on muggle borns and blood traitors you acquire the same views.

'D-did your parents teach you that?' He asked. If Grace were to say how she learnt the trick, and if her parents were also magically then it would help clarify things. The only next problem that Romeo could see was if she was muggle born. How on earth would he get out of going on a date with her?

Unless he stood her up? No. He couldn't do that. Even if she was a muggle born Romeo would have to go on the date, if word got around that he stood girls up and treated them like garbage then there would be no more mouth to mouth resuscitation for Master Zabini.

'It's lovely.' He added after a slight pause, returning to his own disarm with charm routine.

“No, actually.”

Grace liked to learn. It was part of the problem the Sorting Hat had encountered before plonking her unceremoniously into the basement with the other Hufflepuffs who liked to go on midnight raids of the kitchens which always left the House Elves and their sensitive dispositions half-excited and half-terrified for all of the right and wrong reasons. But she enjoyed learning and didn’t stop doing so regardless of her situation and whether it was an eccentric subject or not, she still liked to read up on it. The Muggle idea of magic was never a subject Jasmine had appreciated her daughter looking up in a few odd books from the bookshop down the road from the cafe.

“My mother was always a bit funny about it,” She confided, regarding the daisy for a moment, mentally imagining it ballooning a hundred times its natural size and filling the room. “She always used to say that the Muggles can’t do anything right - let alone magic.” Grace laughed despite herself and shook her head. “I like it though. It’s interesting. I think they’re quite funny, really. They don’t know anything about our world but sometimes their fiction gets close to some aspects and you wonder, don’t you, how much of it do they really know?”

Grace sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her belly. “Professor Wilfred Bobbleschmidt said that the Muggles have their own kind of repressed magic and that’s why we get Muggleborns. He didn’t exactly specify about Squibs though. But, in the same paragraph he went on to talk about how wizards ever managed to breed with Giants. I don’t think he’s all there, you know.”

“My dad used to love that kind of ... non-magic. He used to say it was just as skilled as our kind of magic because it was a little bit of fraud at the same time.” Grace smiled fondly. “Sorry, anyway. Listen to me rattle on. I, uh. I should leave you, shouldn’t I? I’m sure you’ve got things to do.”

Romeo tilted his head whilst he listen to Grace talk about Muggles and how their fiction is so close to our reality. It made him realise that behind the naive, daisy magic girl that there was some philosophical, smart girl there. A girl who thought deep and could think maturely and sophisticated. It also turned out that she wasn't muggle born.

The Slytherins hopes and expectations of how the date could go soared above the shadows that had began to creep into his opinions. He defiantly planned to kiss her. Have a good time with her, maybe joke around each time the catapults lost a player to a bludger.

Being so caught up in his own wanderings of how the date could go with Grace he wasn't even listening to her talking about a Professor, muggle borns and squibs. Although he was brought back to earth at the suggestion of Grace leaving.

His warm, dark hand reached across the table and clasped hers. 'You have to leave?' He asked, ideally he couldn't sit around the Leaky Cauldron all day and would need to get home and some point. Perhaps it would be best to wrap it up and save his built up energy for the match.

'I guess it is getting late, and I suppose we will see each other soon at the match. Do you want to meet outside the stadium?' He added after a pause from his sudden hand movement. It would make sense to meet at the match. It'd be easier to make one journey rather a journey to Diagon Alley then onwards to the match. 

Time enough had been spent in the Leaky Cauldron. Her stomach had been filled and her mind piqued, her soul contented with the promise that another meeting with Romeo brought.

Grace did feel rather silly, rather like the girls she and Charlie had scorned both privately and openly for being stupid, foolhardy and, well, easily dropping into the well of despair that they liked to call love.

And, while it wasn’t love, it still was quite probably more unhealthy than Lycanthropy ever could be and so, understandably, Grace was eager to leave.

The hand atop her own made her stop, though. But only for a second. She pulled it out from beneath Romeo’s and smiled brightly before gesturing to the door.

“No really,” she assured. “I have to go. I’ll miss my train otherwise but it was really nice to meet you...meet you properly, that is.” She smiled brightly and got up, pulling her bag out from under the table and righting her cardigan around her.

She looked at Romeo questioningly at his words and as their meaning dawned, she nodded brightly.

“Sounds perfect. I’ll see you then.”

And then with that said, her cheeks aflame, Gracelyn Llewellyn hurried out of the Leaky Cauldron, her stomach having given birth to butterflies as she made her way down the Muggle street towards the nearest station.

Was it...was it a date, then?