Outfit.

For a day that only contained a one O.W.L. for Vulpes, it had in fact been incredibly long. That was largely due to the fact that after he had finished his Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. (Which he was dreading he only received an A on at best) Vulpes had hastily headed up towards the Library. Over the course of the day he had studied Herbology, Herbology, and still more Herbology. It was the only O.W.L. aside from Potions he was actually concerned with when it came to a grade.

He reached into his robes and pulled out a slip of paper that contained the personal schedule he had created for himself and scowled. It was pretty much just a full day of studying Potions tomorrow. How thrilling.

It was now about fifteen minutes to curfew, and he made his way back down to Slytherin with great effort, feet dragging. All this studying had made his already bitter mood much worse. He missed Aurora. It had been a few days since they could just sit and talk he was so busy.

Yawing loudly as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Vulpes decided to take a look at the hourglasses. He didn't really care who one, but there was some slight satisfaction knowing his house was in first. But as he approached them, he noticed someone was heading inside. Vulpes's mood lifted a few notches. Aurora.

"Rory!" he called out happily. With revived energy he half-skipped towards her. "How are you?" Vulpes asked with a smile before he reached her.

Rory's outfit

Aurora kept her eyes trained on the ground moving in front of her.  She couldn't fathom what had happened the half hour or so.  Her interactions with Huxley turned out to take more of a toll on her than she ever thought possible.  It started out as her usual bout of the school grounds, and ended being the second emotional roller-coaster of her life.  The problem was, she couldn't shake those hellish feelings away, when it would have been easy to do before.

Finally in the Entrance Hall, she gripped her bag strap tighter and heard a familiar voice call out to her.  "Rory!" Vulpes called happily, half-skipping toward her.  She only stopped, not bothering to look up.  "How are you?" he asked before he reached her.

She kept her eyes on the floor.  Not knowing how to tell him how she was feeling, because in all honesty even she didn't know how she was feeling.  She had mixed feelings about Vulpes's timely occurrence.  The new part of her was relieved to see a friendly face, while the old part of her cursed her luck that evening, just wanting to crawl in a hole.

Slowly, she raised her head to meet his, not knowing what her expression looked like, but she had a feeling it wasn't good.

Upon seeing his best friends face, Vulpes halted; staggering back a step. The fact that she took so long to lift her head to look at him was a bad sign in of itself. But the look on her face... that was a whole different matter. Vulpes wasn't sure he'd ever seen her face contain such a myriad of emotions. And from what he could tell, pain was a predominant emotion.

His smile evaporated. "What in the..." he whispered to himself. "Aurora, what..." Vulpes trailed off, considering that the middle of the entrance hall was not the best place to have this conversation. Gently he took her by the hand and walked over to the empty class room, shutting the door quickly behind them.

"Okay," he sighed, leaning up against the door to keep anyone from opening it. "Aurora, what's wrong?" His voice was soft as he asked. Vulpes hated the thought of seeing her upset for what ever reason.

Aurora let herself be pulled into the empty classroom with Vulpes.  There was something oddly comforting about her best friend always arriving when she needed it.  Once inside, she turned to him slowly but kept her eyes on the top of her buckle boots.  "Aurora, what's wrong?" he asked softly, and she flinched at his genuine concern, feeling slightly silly for putting him through this for something so mundane.

She didn't know where to start, in all honesty.  What should she say?  That she met a bloke, chatted for a bit, brought him to her special place and danced with him?  Something about that made her think it wouldn't really bode well for any of them, so instead, she settled with something vague.

"I... met someone.  Someone in your house, in fact.  Huxley Ward?" she said softly, and a little awkwardly, looking up at him blankly to see if he recognized the name.

Vulpes frowned slightly. He tilted his head back against the door and thought for a moment. "Huxley Ward..." The name was familiar, but he couldn't quite... "Wait," He said with sudden realization, snapping his head back down. "He's that guy who makes fun of me all the time..." Vulpes rolled his eyes. "I mean, more so than the others."

It was true. Out of all the people who constantly teased Vulpes, Huxley was one of the most common. That was probably because he was one of the few left who still made an active attempt to get some sort of response from him. Vulpes shook his head. "Can't say I know anything more about him. I'm not sure I want to though." he shrugged and offered Aurora a smile.

"So what did he do that upset you so?" Vulpes tilted his head slightly. In all honesty he could care less what anyone said about him. But, he was always very protective of people whom he cared about. And Aurora fell into that category.

Aurora's nostrils flared at the mention of Huxley making fun of Vulpes.  She heard quite enough teasing about him from Huxley not ten minutes ago, but hearing it from Vulpes himself was another matter.  Turning her head to the side, she spat in her Icelandic tongue to relieve some of the anger boiling beneath the surface.  "Heimskur drengur!  Ég skal slíta hjarta hans út![1]"

She shook her head, and her bout of anger away, and looked back at Vulpes.  "It's nothing," she started, unconvincing.  "It's silly, don't bother," she said lowly, averting her eyes nervously.  "He's just so--" she started again, voice strained and an octave higher.  She groaned and dropped her bag, bringing her hands to her temples with closed eyes.  "I can't even--"

1.	Stupid boy!  I will tear his heart out!

Vulpes smirked as Aurora spat something in Icelandic out. He hadn't a clue what it meant, but he figured it was of little relevance to the situation at hand. But at her insistence that it was nothing, he sighed and crossed his arms. Huxley must have really frazzled her. Vulpes fought back the sudden rage that seized him, pushing his desire to throw Huxley face first off the Astronomy tower.

"Rory," he began carefully. "It's not nothing. If it was nothing you wouldn't be upset." Vulpes frowned, his voice was oddly stern, likely due to the entire day spent studying. "And it's not silly, so yes, I'm going to bother." With another sigh, Vulpes took one of her hands off her temple and squeezed it.

"So c'mon. What did he do?" he asked as nicely as he could manage over the rage and exhaustion that gripped him. "I mean, aside from being the normal, arrogant prick he always is?" Vulpes smiled sweetly to his best friend, hoping she would be comfortable enough to confide in him again.

Aurora chuckled lightly.  "Well, he is, at that." she said, referring to Vulpes's statement of Huxley being an arrogant prick.  She opened her eyes and dropped her other hand from her temple, squeezing his hand back lightly.  Her gaze drifted to his green and silver tie and mentally cursed all Slytherins, except Vulpes.  She sighed deeply and shook her head lightly.  "I don't really know what he did.  Or how he did it.  Something about him just made me... lose it." she explained and looked up at him sheepishly.

"I can handle arrogant pricks," she said casually and rolled her eyes.  "I can handle pretty much any type of person out there.  Except him, and I don't know why.  He tries to be charming one moment, then the other he accuses me of making a big deal out of everything.  We'd have a nice chat over nothing in particular, and then he just..." she bit her bottom lip and looked away.

"He just makes assumptions about my intentions and your intentions, and I don't know.  It's all so fuzzy." she sighed in frustration.  "I was just being polite; that's why I went over to him in the first place.  I don't know what I did wrong." she finished despondently.

Vulpes's smile widened hearing her laugh. That was a good sign. But the elation of knowing Aurora was cheering up faded slightly as she recounted her encounter with Huxley. An eyebrow quirked on Vulpes's face when he heard her mention Ward had the guile to call his intentions into play. 'I intend to be her friend!' he thought savagely.

With a slight huff, Vulpes took up her other hand and pulled Aurora closer, before wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "You probably didn't do anything wrong," he said softly in her ear. "Some people just have the ability to get under your skin."

He held her tightly for a moment longer before pulling back slightly. Vulpes felt his cheeks begin to flush slightly. It wasn't something he could quite place. He had been within close proximity like this with her before, but tonight it seemed different.  Everything about her seemed... prettier.

Vulpes lifted her Aurora's chin slightly and gazed into her eyes. Then, ever so softly, he kissed her[1].

1.	Ugh, sappiest line ever, right?

Aurora felt a huge wave of stress wash away as Vulpes hugged her.  She breathed out heavily and reveled in the comfort of his embrace.  Suddenly, he pulled back slightly and looked at her in a way she had never experienced before.  Why is he looking me like that? she wondered idly, furrowing her eyebrows in curiosity.  Then, out of nowhere, he lifted her chin while gazing into her eyes, making Aurora's eyes widen.

He kissed her.

She hadn't realized what he was doing for a good three seconds, and when she did, her mind raced with all sorts of responses and questions that made her shut her eyes as if to shut them up.  Something felt different, though.  It was something that never crossed her mind as a possibility.  Here she was: being kissed by her best friend, who happened to be male, and who happened to be crushing on someone else.  Despite the internal cries of 'Stop!' and 'Pull away, dammit!', her body reacted without consulting her brain, and as a result, she kissed him back.

Vulpes's mind raced, as a strange feeling of euphoria came over him. The logical side of him that had so recently stated his intentions was staring at him, mouth agape within his mind. But he didn't really pay it any mind, Vulpes had never kissed a girl before.

Wait..

...That shouldn't have changed in the last five seconds.

Hit with the sudden shock of what he had just done, Vulpes pulled back suddenly, slamming his back into the door. Wide eyed he clasped both his hands over his mouth. What in the world had come over him? Why did he kiss her, and for that matter, why did she kiss him back.

Vulpes slid a few inches down the door, still in shock from what had happened. He shouldn't have done that, she was his best friend. And then there was Murphy... Was it normal to harbor feelings like that for two people at the same time? Slowly he came to from his thoughts, and sheepishly looked at her.

He knew he should say something but he wasn't quite sure what. Lifting his hands from his mouth slightly, Vulpes managed a very weak, strangled "I'm sorry..." Without another word he replaced his hands over his mouth, as if he would kiss her again if they weren't there, and stepped to the side of the door. Vulpes turned his gaze away from Aurora, fully expecting her to walk out the door any second now.

Aurora's heart pounded harder than ever at the sensation of kissing.  Before now, she never understood what was such a big deal about kissing.  Now, however, she was starting to get an inkling.  Suddenly, Vulpes pulled away and violently bashed into the door.  She reflexively took a step back into the edge of a table and looked down at her feet nervously.

It was then that she fathomed what had just happened between them, and a slight shudder ran through her body.  What the hell! was all that crossed her mind: repeatedly.  She couldn't look at him; couldn't speak.  Her throat felt as if it's being clasped by an iron fist, beside the pain.

What the hell!

Aurora couldn't comprehend why she would kiss her best friend, but she hoped to the Maker that this wouldn't change anything between them.  A stupid mistake like that had no place in a budding friendship.

"I'm sorry..." his weak and straggled response hit her like a hurricane.  She had vaguely forgot he was still in the room, but now that his voice snapped her back into reality, she looked up at him.  Feeling very exposed and massively awkward at his lack of looking at her, she dropped her gaze and cleared her throat.

"It's not your fault..." came her equally weak and straggled voice.  It didn't sound like her voice, so she wasn't even sure it was indeed herself who said it.

What the hell!

"It's kind of my fault," he replied in a panicked voice. Vulpes turned to look at her, eyes still wide, but mixed with shock and disbelief. His heart seemed abut ready to pound right out of his chest. He noticed with a slight personal satisfaction (one that he buried deep withing himself the moment he felt it) that she had at the very least not walked out on him. Which he took to be a good sign.

"I mean," he continued in the same panicked voice. "I'm you're best friend! I'm not supposed to... to..." Vulpes couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence. Mostly because he didn't want to admit to himself he had just done that.

His legs seemed to stop working, and Vulpes staggered backwards, landing unevenly in a nearby chair. "I'm sorry," he pleaded through his hands, which had found themselves over his mouth again. "I really am! I don't know what came over me..." Vulpes looked up at her, hoping to high heaven that they'd still be friends after this.

Aurora breathed in and out of her nose several times before mustering up the courage to look him in the eye.  "Yeah..." she said as if it explained everything that she was thinking.  "I don't know why I... you know, either." she added and bit her bottom lip, which she noticed, was still warm and slightly tingling from the kiss.

"I don't want this to change our friendship..." she choked on the last word as if it was beyond them.  The concept of Friendship for them seemed tainted at that moment, making her groan inwardly.  "If that's even possible..." she trailed off softly and looked away.  "Besides, we're not even into each other like that, right?" she said it as more of a statement, but her curiosity still hung on the last word.  She cocked her head at him sheepishly.

"No, I don't want it to either..." Vulpes replied weakly. This was probably the worst thing he had ever done in his life. 'What's wrong with you?' he thought angrily. Vulpes wondered if things could ever be the same after this. Or would the memory of what happened haunt there steps?

Her question about whether either of them were interested in the other in that way made him flinch. The honest answer would be 'Yes,' but Vulpes was rather certain that wasn't a good answer. Of course, he couldn't exactly just out right lie and say 'No,' could he? That would probably be worse than a yes, and would call his 'intentions', as Huxley put it, into play.

Vulpes looked away again from embarrassment. "I'm... not sure..." he managed. "I mean... I guess not..." Vulpes offered an extremely weak smile. His mind still raced through various thoughts as he tried to sort out the tangled mess of emotions that had built up inside him.

"I really wish I hadn't done that..." he said flatly more to himself than to Aurora.