Fancy running into you here (Dame/Aur)

So. Many. Jokes.

Aurelie looked around, eyes wide. Things that popped, things that whirled around, things that shrieked and some things that crawled around on the ground. "Oh my Merlin," she whispered, mouth dropping open slightly. She took one step back; and then another, before accidentally tripping over someone. Her hands flew to her mouth as she tumbled to the floor.

"I'm so sorry!" she cried out.

Damian let out a small grunt as someone ran into him, toppling them both to the floor and landing squarely on his chest. Thank Merlin, it wasn't someone bigger!

"No problem," Damian wheezed. He didn't know what he was doing in the joke shop, anyway. He felt anything but jovial.

"I...I..." Aur reached out to help him out, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. "Sorry. Really. Truly, I am." She squinted, realizing belatedly that he was of her own house. "Hey, you're in Hufflepuff, right? Something Gray. Brother to...." She realized her mistake a little while later, turning bright red. "I'm Aurie," she sputtered.

He drew in a sharp breath, holding longer than was natural before letting it out very slowly so it didn't turn into a sob.

"Damian," he replied a bit thickly, accepting the hand up. "I've seen you in the common room."

Aurelie caught the sharp intake of breath and winced. "I'm so sorry," she repeated again. "Damian. Um." She looked around helplessly. "That was really really stupid of me." She gave a weak grin that quickly fell flat as the throng of people started pressing in around them. "Um. Let's go outside, yeah?"

Damian nodded. "Nothing in here I want, anyway," he murmured. He pressed through the crowd pressing their way in to reach the doors and step outside, turning to see if his housemate was still behind him.

"You're what?" he asked, uncertain. "A third year? Fourth?"

A smile quirked at the corners of Aur's lips. "Yeah. Fourth. And you're....?"

It felt nice to be outside, with the fresh air swirling around her.

"Second," Damian replied. He reflected on how he wished he were still a first year; how wished his sister...

The boy shook the thought from his head. "So..." he murmured. He really didn't have anything to talk about. A year ago, he would have been full of things to say. A year ago, his world was still whole.

Aurelie gave him a twisted smile. "I'd like to say that I know what you're going through...and I do, in a way." She bit her lip, searching for words that would simply not come to her head before sputtering out some random words.

"When I was eight, my brother died."

Damian glanced over at her, before redirecting his gaze across the street. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "Must've..." His throat constricted. "Must've been awful."

"Well...yes." Words started spilling out, so many that she could hardly figure out what she, herself, was saying. "He was, erm, kissed by a dementor, controlled by Death Eaters. My mum went crazy, my dad's not the same, my sister--she doesn't even remember my brother, and my aunt; my favorite, amazing aunt, turned out to be the cause of all it." She gave a throaty laugh, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She was used to talking about her brothers, but the incident with her aunt was still relevantly new and pricked at her

"I'm sorry," she added. "I just told you that." Laughing, she wiped away the tears from her eyes quickly before dropping her hand back to her side. "I didn't mean to. It just came out." She smiled at him. "I don't know what happened to your sister, though, so it's not like I can really pry into your life."

Damian frowned sympathetically, but couldn't help but let out a bitter scoff.

"Y'mean you didn't read it in the paper?" he asked sarcastically. "You must be the only one."

He kicked at a pebble on the ground. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Aurelie let out a nervous giggle. "I did read about it...partially. I've stopped trusting the paper since the Rita Skeeter debacle few years back."

"She was killed by muggles," Damian whispered, voice suddenly hoarse. "I didn't destroy a whole block, though." Only all the glass, he added silently.

"Journalists are stupid," he opined. "They should mind their own business."

"Muggles."

Aurelie's voice was hoarse as well. She desperately wanted to say something--say anything, but couldn't. Slowly, she reached down and sat on a chair, eyes wide.

I'm so sorry, Damian, she said on the inside.

Damian let out a huff of air that may have been meant to be a laugh but was severely lacking.

"So," he said, not even bothering to muster false cheer. "How was your summer? Better'n mine, I'd bet."

"Nah, not really," Aurelie said glumly. "It's just me, my dad, Tabby--my sister -- trying to talk to my mum. Severely depressing. But yeah. I guess it is..." She gave him a sidelong glance, tugging her fingers through her hair. "Do you...I mean..." She let out a sigh in which the rest of her sentence was lost.

"Oh. Sorry," Damian mumbled.

His blue eyes turned to the girl. "Do I, what?" he asked.

Aurelie gave a half-hearted grin. "I was going to say, 'Do you miss her very much' but it's sort of a stupid question, isn't it?" His eyes, she noticed, were far bluer than her own. "What about your parents?"

She realized, albeit belatedly, that it was yet another stupid, prying question, but it hung in the air no matter what she did to cram it back into her mouth. "Sorry," she sputtered. "I'm just full of blunders today, ain't I?" Self-consciously, she tugged her hands through her light brown hair more.

"Oh. Yeah, that's a pretty stupid question," he agreed, with a half-hearted smirk. "But... well, yeah, I do." His tone grew thick, but he continued anyway. "It might sound stupid, or weird, but... My sister was everything. We... we had this - this bond, an' I can still feel it, y'know? B-but there's no one there anymore."

Damian bit down on his lip until it bled.

He shook his head. "I don't know... I haven't seen them, since - I don't know." The boy frowned thoughtfully at the ground.

"Don't worry about it," Damian told her. "You don't mean nothing by it. You're just trying to be... nice."

Aurelie nodded sympathetically as he talked about his sister. When he bit down on his lip so hard it started to bleed, red droplets appearing, she dug up a tissue and handed it to him. "Sorry," she said. "What a weak, pathetic word...sorry...but I really can't think of anything to say." She tilted her head. "I...I used to wonder what it would be like to have a sibling my age. Someone to laugh with, talk with, fight with. My sister's too young for any of this. But I'm sorry, for what it's worth." She skipped around the question of his parents. "And...thanks. I'd never thought that one of my blunders would be called 'nice.'" She gave a bleak laugh, then dug into her bag again and came up with a bar of chocolate. "Chocolate?"

Damian awarded her with another wan smile, accepting the tissue and pressing it to his lip. "She's... was... nine years older than me," he murmured. "Never mattered, though. She was my hero.

"Kinda hard not to make blunders when almost everything might be the wrong thing to say," he pointed out ruefully. Damian accepted the bar of chocolate. "Thanks."

He looked much happier when he smiled, Aurelie thought, even though his smile was also massed with a fine spiderweb of red blood. She dug out a chocolate bar for herself and unwrapped it, breaking off a square. "It's lovely out here," she said idly. "It really is. Have you been to Hogsmeade much?"

Damian dabbed at his lip a bit more. It had started to sting a bit. He unwrapped the chocolate and took a small bite.

"A bit," he answered. "I was here a lot, last year, with... well.

"Nice day, I guess." The boy squinted at nothing in particular.

Aurelie shot him an amused glance when he said, "Nice day."

"Well...yes, it is," she said airily. "Look at the leaves! They're all red, orange and gold. The air's cold and crisp, and the sun is shining. I love these sort of days....though rarely anyone else does. It's a day for hot chocolate, a day for sitting on a park bench bundled up." She tilted her head. "I wonder..." she said slowly. "I wonder if your sister would have liked it."

Her breath stopped for just a moment as she waited for his answer.