Rainbow Fragments

Daisy White

Terry Boot looked incredulously at the girl sitting across from him at his kitchen table. "Excuse me, I think I just hallucinated. What did you just say?"

Padma Patil rolled her eyes at her long-time close friend. "I said, you do have a date on Saturday night," she repeated, slowly and carefully as though he might otherwise have trouble understanding her.

"Since when?"

"Since I decided that you need to get out more. How many hours a day are you spending locked up here with pages of research, trying to find a cure for Cruciatus, anyway?" the Indian girl asked.

"We are in the middle of a war, or hadn't you noticed?" he shot back defensively.

"That's no excuse," Padma returned. "You still need to have a life, so you are going to be at Le Argent Dragon at half-six on Saturday. No excuses."

Terry knew when he'd been beaten, and he knew better than to argue with Padma when she had that mad tempestuous gleam in her eye. So instead of arguing, he merely asked, "Who's the poor girl?"

Padma grinned mischievously. "It's a surprise," she answered.

"A blind date?" Terry asked, "And you say you're not anything like your sister."

~*~

Terry sat alone at a table in Le Argent Dragon, the wizarding world's most exclusive restaurant, at a quarter to seven on Saturday night. Whoever this girl was, Terry reflected as he checked his pocket watch for the hundredth time that night, she had clearly decided not to show up. Terry didn't blame her. If Padma hadn't shown up at his flat at six and threatened to strip him off herself if he didn't go get changed for his date before loading him into a taxi and handing him a white daisy that he was supposed to use to signal to the girl that he was her date, he wouldn't be here himself.

'Well,' he thought, 'there's no point in hanging around any longer if she's not coming. Maybe I can even get the Geiss theory read tonight, so the evening won't be a total waste.' He was just about to pick up his things and leave when a pretty blonde girl entered, wearing a salmon pink dress which has embroidered white daisies running down the join of each sleeve. Spotting him, and the daisy lying on the table in front of him, the girl, who Terry vaguely recognised, smiled and walked over to him.

"You wouldn't happen to have been sent here on a blind date, would you, Terry?" the girl asked, fiddling with the end of her long plait.

"Er...yes, I have, actually," Terry answered nervously, all the while thinking, 'Oh, damn, she knows my name, and I have no clue who she is.'

The girl must have caught the fleeting look of panic that crossed Terry's features, because she smiled again, and said, "I don't expect that you'd remember me, of course. After all, I had the advantage of you being Head Boy." She sat down, her hazel eyes watching him carefully. "I'm Susan Bones," she added.

"Oh, of course," Terry said. "I remember you now, Susan." As he said this, he picked up the daisy lying on the table and handed it to her. "You were a Hufflepuff, weren't you?" he asked.

Susan took the daisy from him and sighed. "That's going to follow me around for the rest of my life, isn't it?" she asked, as she threaded the daisy into the end of her plait. "Oh, you're loyal, are you? As if it were some kind of dodgy consolation prize."

"Hogwarts Houses are over-rated, anyway." Terry said, "I mean, look at Hermione Granger. She beat everyone come exam time, and she was a Gryffindor. Ravenclaw never had the monopoly on brains; nor, one can reasonably assume, the other Houses on their specialities."

"And besides," Susan added, laughing, "I hate yellow."

They lapsed into silence at this point, the topic of conversation having reached its end. Finally Terry, whose mind was never far from his work, spoke up. "Bones..." he said. "You wouldn't happen to be related to Christopher David Bones, who wrote 'The Darkness: Unforgivable Curses and their History', would you?"

As soon as he said it, Terry knew he had done something wrong. Susan's smile disappeared, and a deep, profound sadness touched her hazel eyes. "Yes, I am, actually," she answered, her voice quiet and somewhat choked, as though she was holding back tears. "He was my father," she added. "He and my mother were killed in the first war."

"Oh," Terry said, regretting having brought up the subject. "I'm sorry."

"How could you have known?" she asked. "Now," she added, her smile falsely bright, "let's just change the subject and forget about it, shall we? We're here to have a pleasant evening, and I believe this dinner might still be salvageable."

~*~

Some time later that evening, just as they were both finishing their main courses, Terry glanced up at Susan to find her looking at him with a queer sort of half-smile on her face. "Knut for your thoughts?" Terry suggested.

"What?" Susan asked, coming abruptly back from whatever daydream she had been lost in. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that I was glad that I came tonight, after all. I nearly didn't, especially after I was running so late."

"Well," Terry replied, "I'm glad that you did, too. I was about to leave before you showed up, but I've had a really nice time. Anyway, the night's not over yet. Shall I order us some dessert?" Susan nodded, and Terry motioned over a waiter.

"How can I help you, sir?" the waiter asked in a snooty, disapproving tone.

"We'll have two servings of your famous coffee-chocolate cheesecake, please," Terry ordered.

"No!" Susan exclaimed. "Ah, I mean, could you change one of those to a caramel-apple tart, please?"

As the waiter left, Terry looked at her questioningly.

Susan explained, "I'm allergic to chocolate."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Terry apologised. "I should have asked first."

"No harm done," Susan said with a smile.

~*~

Terry was just taking the last bite of his coffee-chocolate cheesecake when he closed his eyes and sighed with satisfaction. "That," he said, "was marvellous. How is yours?"

"Wonderful. But I'm not sure I can finish it," Susan replied. "Do you want a taste?"

"Sure," Terry agreed, and reached across the table to take a piece. As he did so, however, he accidentally knocked Susan's champagne flute over, spilling the liquid all over her pink silk dress. "Oh!" Terry exclaimed. "I'm so sorry!" He passed her his napkin, with which she could attempt to clean up the mess, and then stood, pulled out his wallet, removed some Galleons to pay for the meal and said to Susan, "I'm sorry this date has been such a disaster."

"No, it hasn't," she denied.

"Let's see, shall we?" said Terry, annoyed with himself for ruining an evening with such a beautiful young woman. "I couldn't remember you; I called you a Hufflepuff, which you evidently hate; I brought up the subject of your dead father; I ordered you a dessert that you're allergic to and I spilled a drink all over you, ruining your dress. I think we can safely say that this date has been an absolute disas-"

Terry was brought to a halt mid-rant, as Susan had leant across the table and kissed him forcefully. She sat back in her chair and looked at him. "Now will you shut up?" she asked. "I've had a really lovely time tonight, but if you insist upon telling me how awful the evening has been, I just might start agreeing with you."

~*~

They paid and left the restaurant, Terry Apparating to Susan's apartment with her to 'make sure she got home safely'. They stood awkwardly at her door for a moment before Terry leant over and kissed her goodnight, saying, "I'd love to see you again sometime, Susan. Would you like to have lunch with me tomorrow?"

Susan readily agreed, and they made arrangements to meet at Terry's flat the next day and decide what to do from there.

~*~

Feeling happier than he had in a long time, Terry decided the next day to take the morning off, something he hadn't done even on Sundays since starting his current job, and went shopping in Diagon Alley. He arrived back at his flat at mid-day, half an hour before he was due to meet Susan, to a frantically ringing telephone. Checking Caller ID he saw that it was only Padma, probably calling to get her share of the gossip from the night before, and decided that she could wait ten or twenty minutes while he had a shower and got changed. Five, ten, fifteen and twenty minutes later Padma rang again, and Terry seriously considered unplugging his phone, but didn't for fear of missing a call from someone other than his best female friend. Twenty-five minutes after he had arrived home Terry was ready to his satisfaction, as he would have been five or ten minutes before had he not had to keep racing to the phone to check it was only Padma, and, right on cue, Padma called again. This time, Terry answered.

"Hello?"

"Oh, Terry, thank goodness I finally caught you," Padma said, sounding rushed. "I've been trying to get through all day."

Just then, his doorbell rang. Telling Padma to "Hang on a sec", Terry walked over to the intercom. "Who is it?" he asked.

"Terry? It's Susan. Let me up, would you?"

He pressed the door release, and unlatched the front door to let her in. Kissing her on the cheek, he said, "I'll be right with you, I just have to sort Padma out first."

"That's fine," Susan said, settling herself on to his couch. She was dressed simply, in jeans and a pale pink shirt, with, Terry was charmed to see, a white daisy threaded into the end of her plait.

"Now," he said into the phone, "whatever you've got to say, Padma, say it quickly. I've got a visitor."

"I just wanted to say sorry for last night," Padma said quickly, apparently taking Terry at his word, "with your date not showing up and all, but I didn't find out 'til you'd left, and then I couldn't get hold of you."

"Padma," Terry said in a slow, careful voice, trying to cover his confusion, "what are you talking about? Susan did show up last night, and, actually, we had a marvellous-"

"Susan?" Padma broke in. "What's she got to do with anything? You were supposed to be on a date with Lavender. You know, Parvati's friend."

Terry let a few moments of confused silence lapse between himself and his friend before saying, in a dangerously quiet voice, "Do you mean to tell me, Padma Katayani Patil, that I went on the wrong blind date?"

"Um," said Padma. "Must have. Well, how was I to know? It's not like white daisies are the most common date flower in the world. That's why we chose it."

"We?" questioned Terry, momentarily distracted. "You mean to tell me that my private life was the discussion topic of several - wait, that's not important. Look, Padma, Susan's over here now, and since I really can't be bothered trying to make sense of this situation enough to explain it to someone else, and since said situation is more your fault than mine, you're going to do it for me. Got it?"

Padma sighed, "Fine," she agreed begrudgingly.

"Susan?" Terry called. "Suse, Padma wants to talk to you for a moment. Do you mind?"

Susan looked up from the copy of the Geiss theory that Terry had left sitting on his coffee table. "Sure," she agreed, walking over and taking the phone from him. "Hi, Padma," she said into the phone. "What's up?"

Terry walked over to sit on the couch that Susan had just vacated and picked up the copy of the Geiss theory that she had discarded, so that he would have something other than the utterly torturous phone conversation taking place on the other side of the room to focus on. He came back to the events in the room itself only when he heard Susan say, "Well, thanks, Padma. Bye!"

Susan walked back across the room and sat down beside him on the couch, playing nervously with the white daisy in her hair. "So," she said. "The wrong date, huh?"

"Seems that way," Terry replied. "Look, Susan -"

"Well, she said, "I don't suppose it matters either way. A blind date is a blind date, isn't it? Although it is rather a coincidence that they picked my favourite flower as an identifier. Unless you'd rather go on a date with Lavender Brown, of course."

A fleeting look of disgust crossed Terry's face at the thought, and Susan burst out laughing. "Terry, I was kidding," she reassured him. "You abandon me for that clueless bint, and you're not the person I thought you were. Or who the Sorting Hat thought you were, either," she added, smirking.

"Who was it who decided that a thousand-year-old piece of millinery was the best way of sorting students into house groups, anyway?" he asked.

Susan shrugged. "What kind of idea was it to use white daisies to decide who one's date for the evening is?" she returned.

Terry laughed and kissed her, glad beyond belief of the existence of white daisies and blind dates.