Flower Beds

Sevastyan was only willing to admit to himself, and even then only under the severe lock-and-key method of the strongest Occlumency he could conjure, that for a moment he thought she would refuse. Despite the smile, he became increasingly nervous at the color splashed across her face but refused to give away his emotional state.

At the reply, it was as if the raincloud-gray irises brightened considerably: as if this was certainly going to be the highlight of his entire day. The smile on his face widened to its fullest, reaching his eyes. A million phrases ranging from the ever-stiffly formal to something more along his standard joviality raced through his mind, rendering him unable to just pick one. So, instead, he nodded and -hesitantly, mind you- moved to tuck a bit of Viper's long raven hair behind her ear. Whether she'd allow such a thing was beyond him. "Ve both have something to look forvard to, then," he finally said, coming to a conclusion on what to say.

With a quick look back to Professor DeLanquar, and the flowers surrounding the area, Sevastyan returned his gaze to Viper's and asked, "Shall I leave and let the two of you talk, or vould it be alright if I stayed a little longer?"

Viper's blush deepened at Sevastyan's reaction as her eyes fluttered close for a moment at the brief, but welcome, contact between them. "Indeed." she replied warmly and happily.

She had completely forgotten about Eglantine's presence until Sevastyan had reminded her with an inquiry on whether or not he should take his leave. Viper decided not to answer him with words but rather with actions. Showing the same hint of hesitation Sevastyan had earlier, Viper grasped Sevastyan's hand, entwining her fingers with his as she pulled him to the spot she had previously occupied, levitating herself once more, inviting him to do the same as well.

Eglantine continued to remove dead or dying flowers from the bed, waiting for either a question to be addressed at her or some formal request to leave.

Sevastyan allowed Amaranth's hand to entwine with his, and to show he didn't mind the gesture he even gave her hand a very light squeeze before being led to where she stood before. He accepted the invitation, levitating beside Viper with his legs crossed almost as if in a meditative position but not quite.

"Forgive my ignorance, Professor, but vot kind of flowers are you planting?" Sevastyan asked, not wanting her to feel left out of the conversation. However, he also wasn't too familiar with the plant in question so he was actually, as the saying goes, 'killing two birds with one stone'.

Without creating a lot of fanfare over the action, Sevastyan once again gently squeezed Viper's hand as he had not let go even to cast a levitation spell on himself. Being ambidextrous had a few advantages, after all.

Viper smiled as Sevastyan moved to levitate beside her, listening to Eglantine's response. She wasn't entirely sure of plant being grown herself. Perhaps some other time she would have listened more intently, but for now she was pleasantly semi-distracted by Sevastyan's presence and subtle signs of affection.

Eglantine picked a healthy flower from its stalk and held it up to Sevastyan. "Lavender, it is a member of the mint family and a rather hardy plant." she replied to his question. She could have gone into far greater detail, but decided he was probably only interested in its name, and most likely was only attempting to move her attention from the fact that he was holding Viper's hand... a rather sweet gesture, she thought.

Sevastyan leaned forward slightly to examine the flower in mild interest. “I have seen pictures of lavender, I believe, but the illustrators clearly do not do it justice. It has many uses, from vot I understand...” he trailed off, not wanting to monopolize the conversation.

He glanced in Amaranth’s direction, curious as to why she had suddenly become rather quiet. While he attempted to be furtive about it, Sevastyan had his doubts that the plan actually worked: he’d lingered too long. It had been because he had tried to contemplate what a sprig of lavender would look like woven into her hair or gently added to the hair now tucked behind her ear. Eventually he’d decided that while the bright color would have contrasted nicely with the raven locks, it just didn’t seem... Viper-esque... enough to suit either one of them.

That was okay, though: he’d learned something today he had clearly either forgotten or hadn’t covered when he had taken Potions or Herbology at Durmstrang. Sevastyan preferred the latter conclusion though: the former would suggest he had memory problems, which he was certain would have become the brunt of many a joke... and he never really liked many of his professors as a kid.

Viper nodded, showing her acknowledgement of Eglantine's information with as much interest as she could show, although it wasn't alot, for Viper wasn't a gardener at all.

"Yes, its used to help relieve stress, calm nervousness, heal minor injuries, and as a sedative. Healers often add them to potions as they are brewing them, but it isn't wise course of action. When being brewed, the composition of the potion is still being constructed and is quite impressionable. As lavender isn't as dominant of an ingredient as others used, being added at the wrong time would lower the effectiveness and the potion would focus in on another ingredient's properties, altering and lowering the potion's value and usefulness."

Viper suspected that the information she contributed was one both Eglantine and Sevastyan were both familiar with, but it didn't really come to her mind all that much. It was to serve one purpose and that was to draw as little attention to the fact that slowly, Viper shifted back to her original position on her stomach, still keeping her hand in Sevastyan's, so she could still participate in the conversation at hand. As subtly as Sevastyan had been when holding her hand, she inched closer and closer to him so she levitated mere centimeters from him.

While Viper was enjoying the hand entwining and other contact between her and Sevastyan, she didn’t quite feel the need to draw excessive attentions to the public displays of affection. Not like one certain Slytherin and Gryffindor…

Eglantine nodded along with Viper's bot of potion knowledge. "I have heard that, fascinating is it not?" She levitated herself from the ground, biting her lip as her hip protesting the action.
After all she had to straighten her legs in order to appear standing. There were pinpricks of pain dashing along her side and hip, but she thought of them as a good thing. If the pain was not there, it could mean that she was losing nerve control and that she would be paralyzed. With that in mind, Eglantine welcomed the pain with open arms.
Noting how closely Viper had hovered over to Sevastyan, she levitated smoothly over to another flower bed, this time one with heavy red roses.

Sevastyan nodded, recalling having read such information. Though, at Durmstrang, hardy plants were particularly adored. Odd that he hadn't recognized the plant, for surely it would have been a prominent fixture in their lessons despite its potential for depreciating the value and usefulness of the concoction. "Qvite interesting," he offered, the only indication that he had heard of this information being a slight knowledgeable overtone to his voice.

It wasn't until several moments after Viper had finished moving around that he felt a pressure almost so close next to him that one would have a hard time getting a slip of parchment between them. Knowing who it had to be, Sevastyan made no move to evade and instead gave the hand holding Viper's a very slight twitch. Was it acknowledgment that he knew how close she was and didn't mind, or an involuntary muscular tick?

Sevastyan observed Professor DeLanquar now moving over to another bed of flowers, this time containing roses. Glancing about his immediate surroundings, the Russian took note of the darker-petaled roses. "I am familiar vith those," he paused to gesture with his free hand to the flowers Eglantine was now working with and the black-petaled ones he'd seen. "But vone thing has alvays had me curious: vould a black rose be the result of very dark red petals? Or possibly blue vones?" He glanced to both professors, genuinely curious to know the answer. Roses weren't exactly prominent as a potion ingredient, from what he recalled, but then again he had been wrong before...

Noticing that Sevastyan didn't appear to be bothered by her movement, Viper smiled and shrugged. "As embarassing as it is to admit it, I am a horrible gardener. I never grew the potions ingredients. In fact, when I was younger, I was banned from my mothers garden." she gave a short laugh. "My mother always said I have a death touch."

Eglantine smiled faintly. "What kind of flowers did your mother grow?" she asked, gently so as not to appear prying. It was no secret that Viper had never gotten along well with some members of her family.

Sevastyan offered a good-natured but short laugh approximately when Viper did so, assuming it was all right to laugh at such a time. Occasions when Viper spoke of her family weren't very often in his conversations with her, so Sevastyan listened for her answer with interest and reclined slightly. The magic holding him up quickly added support to his back. His hand that was entwined with Viper's barely moved during this process of finding a more comfortable alternative to the stiff-backed posture he'd been maintaining.

Viper smiled gently, matching the tone of Eglantine's inquiry. "I can't say for sure. They were always dead by the time I was there." she said half seriously, half jokingly.

The Potions Mistress thought for a moment, trying to recall what plants her mother was overly fond of. After a few minutes of contemplating, she replied back. "There was a bed of Black Hollyhock, Black Dianthus, Black Mourning Bride, Black Nasturtium, and her pride and joy: Strobilanthes callosus," Viper smiled wryly as she thought of how Anette had more care for her flowers than her children. But then again, she mused, her flowers were all her own, while her children were strictly belonging to the Viper Clan.

Eglantine allowed a faint smile at the jest, but it hardly reached her eyes. There was too much promise of truth in the statement...

"Those are all...beautiful flowers." Eglantine ventured. Hardly flowers that most gardeners were fond of, but then again the Viper clan no doubt strived to be unique. "My mother loathed plants. She referred to them as "thorns" and would never allow them into our house." There were terrible memories attached to that thought, but she shuddered slightly and ignored them. The past was best visited when she was alone.


((Amazingly there are Strobilanthes callosus here where I live...))

((really? I've never seen them myself but I've heard they're gorgeous.))

Viper nodded, noticing how Eglantine was reacting and the conversation was starting to take a darker tone. With a smile she turned to Sevastyan. "You know, you say you are a terror of a gardener but I bet I'm more of a menace than you say you are" she challenged light heartedly, with a playful tone to her voice.

"Is that so?" Sevastyan quipped, an eyebrow cocked with intrigue while a part of a grin started to make itself known. "Ve should see about that sometime... vith plants that no vone vill mind if they suddenly vilt to nothing." Obviously, that excluded the flower beds and rose bushes, and pretty much all the greenhouses, too. Did he take her up on the light-hearted challenge? He sure did! Though, he mused for a moment, it would indeed be interesting to see which of them made the worst gardener... If Amaranth's account was true to its word, not that he doubted her entirely, Sevastyan was pretty sure she'd achieve victory in a very short amount of time.

"I could let you use the two empty beds over there." Eglantine offered, a bit hesitantly. Already she had lost one bed to a terrible gardner, and thankfully the damage had been reversible...
"If you need any supplies, I would be happy to give them to you."

Viper laughed and smiled at Eglantine. "Thank you, Professor, that is very kind of you."

With that, she turned back to Sevastyan, preparing to tell him a highly amusing and ironic anecdote . "I feel I should warn you though of my complete hopelessness when it comes to gardening. When I worked in the Ministry, the other wizards in my Department's fellowship were so poor in anything to do with plants that we...had to take remedial Herbology classes." Viper confessed dissolving in soft giggles as she thought of her old fellows she ran the Department with: Cragen, Munch, Stabler, and Fin.


((lol, I'm an SVU fan ^_^))

Sevastyan smiled his thanks. "Indeed, it is. Thank you, Professor. I'm sure ve vill not disrupt the other flower beds vith this challenge," he said, the assurances a response to the clear hesitance in her voice.

Turning to Viper the moment she spoke, Sevastyan graced her with a look of amusement as she told her story. It was then he learned that when someone listened to another giggle, at least in the context of this situation, it tended to create the ever-contagious laughter. How did he learn this? Because he laughed with her, that how! "A tactic to scare me avay from the challenge early?" he quipped, voice drenched with mirth. Sevastyan didn't fully disbelieve her, though.

"You seem to know much about gardening professor..." Sevastyan once again focused his optical attention on Eglantine. "Do you have any recommendations on vot ve should attempt to plant in that area?"

Eglantine levitated herself to a standing position. "If you are truly as hopeless at gardening as you claim, I would suggest radishes." It was fairly well known through out the world that radishes required only shoving into the ground in order to plant successfully as the soil and water mattered little. Of course the statement was a perfect example of the dry sense of humour that Professor DeLanquar rarely exhibited.

Viper smirked at Sevastyan. "Let the games begin. You're going down Sevastyan! " she laughed good naturedly, curious to see which of the two of them was poorer at gardening.

"Do radishes have seeds?" Viper asked Eglantine curiously, never being fond of radishes and knowing nothing about them.

"Indeed. And ve vill see about that one!" Sevastyan replied with the same good-natured cadence.

At the question, Sevastyan likewise turned to the Muggle Studies professor. He would assume radishes did have seeds, but didn't want to hazard a guess. His family had only grown magical potion ingredients in their gardens. And flowers.

Eglantine sighed, they had not been exaggerating when they had stated that they were terrible gardeners.
"Yes, radishes have seeds." Accioing her basket from another flower bed, she pulled out a pouch and handed it to Viper. "Radishes should be planted 1.27 centimeters deep and 2.5 centimeters away from other seeds. The plants will be up in 4 to 6 days...the radishes should be ready for harvest in 4 weeks."

Viper raised an eyebrow at the instructions, not looking forward to the task ahead. "I actually have to measure dirt? I can't just stick these in the ground?"