A Gryffindor's Terms

Title: A Gryffindor’s Terms


Author: Sonya


Rating: PG


Summary: FFA pairing #474, Dawn/Percy. Set post season 7 BtVS, post book 5 (by quite a bit) HP.


***


"One moment, please!" Percy Weasley called out, frowning down at his notes, Watchers’ diaries spread out before him on his loft bed. He was certain he was missing something, and didn’t want to break his concentration, but the knock on the door sounded again, rather more insistently this time. He flung himself over the side of the loft with an irritated huff, running hands through hair that hadn’t seen a proper brushing in quite a few days – with the dorms of the Watchers’ Academy empty for the holidays, there hadn’t seemed to be much point.


"Yes?" he pulled the door open an irritable crack at first, then wider when he saw who stood on the other side. He also blushed, shuffled his feet, ran his hands through his hair again, realized he was wearing pajama bottoms and no shirt, and mentally called himself a moron on seven different languages. "Er, good evening, Professor."


"Will you stop that?" Dawn Summers exclaimed. Her hand had been raised to knock again, and now it dropped to her side in exasperation. "Every time you call me ‘Professor’ I just want to go crawl under a rock and *die* I feel so old!"


"Um, right," Percy stammered. He knew she was in fact just his age, and she didn’t look old, not in the least, especially not in the very form-fitting festive red sweater she was wearing. It was made out of something fuzzy that just begged to be touched, and the color made her fairly glow. Of course, a paper bag would have made her glow. He just could not get accustomed to Muggle clothing on females, and especially not on this female, who was a *Professor* of all things, and no one whom he should be considering in that manner at all –


"Hello, Earth to Percy," Dawn chirped, bouncing on her heels and giving him a raised eyebrow and a little wave of her hand.


"Hello," Percy responded, and remembered three more languages in which he could call himself a blithering idiot. Four, if one counted Troll.


"Hello yourself," she responded, sounding vaguely amused and vaguely concerned. "You okay?"


"I’m fine, I was just -" and at that moment, his brain decided to draw an utter blank on anything he had been doing in the last day and a half. "Um -" Her eyebrows crept toward her hairline at roughly the same rate that his stomach was slithering down toward his toes. "Diaries – I was, with diaries, reading up on – studying!"


"You were reading up on studying," Dawn repeated back flatly, and the corners of her annoyingly perfect lips were twitching. He flushed yet further, feeling it all the way down to his kneecaps, and aware that his rather spindly arms were probably turning an unpleasant mottled pink. He wondered if it would be appropriate to ask the professor where she kept that rock, the one she crawled under when she felt old, and whether he could borrow it for a moment.


"I was studying the case of Xiu Yin -" he clarified, as his brain had since located that previously misplaced fact.


"You turned in that assignment," Dawn crossed her arms beneath her chest, which did nothing to help Percy’s blushing. "Last week. Buffy let me read it. You were very, very thorough."


"My conclusion was -" hippogryff dung, were the words that sprang immediately to mind. They didn’t seem terribly appropriate for use with a Professor in a red fuzzy sweater with an absolutely perfect bosom that he really must *not* so much as glance at, despite the fact that staring determinedly into her face was causing his pulse to pound so loudly in his ears he was worried she might hear it.


"Bullshit?" Dawn supplied cheerfully.


"Er -" said Percy.


"It’s okay. Want in on a secret? I think you can handle it," she leaned forward, sounding mischievously conspiratorial.


"If – if you think it’s appropriate," Percy crossed his arms over his own chest uncomfortably. She had not, so far, made any expressions of amusement or revulsion at his shirtlessness, but perhaps she just hadn’t noticed.


She snorted. "Of course it’s not appropriate. Knowing stuff that’s not appropriate is one of the perks of being the Headmaster’s sister. And, knowing stuff that the Headmaster’s sister knows is one of the perks of my liking you," she concluded, then paused, and then to his great astonishment, blushed herself. "I mean, for you. Perk for you. ‘Cause .. right, hang on a second while I remove my foot from my mouth, and then we can back to the point, which was that the Xiu Yin assignment was supposed to be bullshit."


Percy just stared dumbly, stuck back somewhere around the fact that she apparently liked him. In a manner that caused her to blush.


"It’s supposed to teach you upperclassman types humility and harsh reality and all that stuff," Dawn went on determinedly, rolling her eyes. "It’s dumb. You learn harsh reality when somebody dies and not before, but Buffy thought it would - I dunno, prepare you or something. Like the weekly memorial service doesn’t do that, and most of you aren’t here ‘cause you had happy-sappy lives anyway, so – yeah. There’s no answered. Xiu Yin was good. Her Watcher was good. Spike was better. End of story. You can stop studying now."


"Uh – oh," Percy stammered. "Well, that’s -"


"Frustrating? Makes you want to tear your hair out?" Dawn finished his sentence again, her choice of words once again remarkably close to the thoughts he had just decided not to voice. "Buffy is *so* not a research type. She just doesn’t understand the cruelty of assigning a question with no answer."


"Er – yes," Percy agreed cautiously, because he *did* agree, but he really wasn’t certain that criticizing the Headmaster and oldest living Slayer, to her sister and a Professor no less, was the way to maintain his standing at the top of his class.


"It’s okay, you know," Dawn uncrossing her arms and stuffing them in the pockets of her distractingly tight jeans, then apparently changing her mind and crossing them again. "You don’t have to be all circumspect and proper and stuff, you know, with me. We could . . talk, or something. Sometimes. It’d be cool." Her cheeks were matching her sweater, and he was just gaping. "Okay, okay, fine!" she exclaimed suddenly, making him jump. "I suck at subtle, okay? So, Faith is threatening me with Andrew and mistletoe if I don’t get you down to Christmas Eve dinner and I think she’s plotting for there to be mistletoe involved in that too and she’s probably going to get us under some if she doesn’t just lock us in a closet or something ‘cause she’s all ‘D, grow a spine’ and ‘D, jump his bones already’ and you know it’s impossible not to do what she wants eventually, not that I’d like, mind that or anything, but now it’s on a sorta dire time-table, ‘cause, mistletoe .. and . . Andrew." She trailed off, red enough to light up the hallway and biting her lip but still watching his face closely.


"Are you going to say anything, or are you just going to let me stand here and marinate in my humiliation?" she asked, a long and awkwardly silent moment later. "Also, if you say anything about me being a professor, I’m going to kick you in the shins. Just giving you fair warning."


"Right, so then I . . won’t say that," Percy responded.


"Were you going to say it?" Dawn asked, sounding more insecure than he had imagined was possible. "I mean, if it really genuinely bothers you -"


"No, no I wasn’t – I wasn’t actually going to say anything," he admitted. "My brain sort of skipped out on me. There was a lack of things to say." He thought that sounded almost clever; almost like something she might say.


"Ah, brain melt," Dawn nodded. "I’m familiar with it. Sorry."


"No, it’s – it’s really quite alright," he attempted to assure her, though ‘quite alright’ seemed really quite inadequate as descriptions went. ‘Bloody unbelievable’ might be more like it, followed closely by ‘are you sure’ and ‘what are you thinking?’


Then another thought occurred to him, only distantly related but potentially useful. That thought was that his roommate Jean-Paul – currently at home in France undoubtedly trying to juggle Christmas get-togethers with no less than three separate girlfriends, all unaware of the others’ existence – was an irrepressible lech. Who had acquired mistletoe in large quantities before heading home, and had been stalking the older Slayer candidates with it for weeks. Where the thought went next was either very clever indeed or the second-stupidest thing he’d ever considered.


"One – one moment, please," Percy stammered, and ducked back into the room.


"You should come to dinner anyway," Dawn called after him. "Willow cooked, Buffy’s been kept miles away from the kitchen, so it’s likely to be actually edible. And what are you doing?"


"Looking for something," Percy responded, rummaging busily through Jean-Paul’s drawers.


"You don’t have to dress up or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about," Dawn suggested. "Just throw on a shirt, nobody’s being formal or anything. I’m just going in this." Percy took a moment to process that her current attire was apparently casual, and to wonder what she might look like in something less casual, before he opened another chaotic mess of a drawer and saw a hint of green towards the back.


"What is that?" she asked suspiciously, as Percy marched back to the door, holding his prize aloft.


"No offense intended to Miss Faith," Percy pronounced, trying and failing to keep his voice from shaking with nerves. She’d either find the idea quite amusing and inspired, or she’d kick him somewhere other than his shins. "But I prefer to do these sorts of things on my own terms. Don’t you?"


She was glancing up at the mistletoe he held over their heads as if afraid it might bite. It wasn’t a promising sign. He was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t grossly misinterpreted the entire exchange and was currently making an enormous fool of himself, when she smiled. It was a nervous, faintly wavery sort of smile, but a bright one none the less.


"Absolutely," she agreed, and leaned forward to just brush her lips against his.


***