Unpacking, (W/B)

[Elizabeth Fritzpatrick]

Bess' things were being taken to her room, and she had more than enough time to set up things in her office. Iggy walked along behind her as she carried the box containing the main essentials she needed for teaching class. Books and other essentials were already in the classroom, but these were her personal teaching effects. She had brought them with her from the Ministry. Setting the box down on the desk, she pulled at her scarf and tossed it on the chair. She heard a muffled growling coming from the chair and turned to see Ignatius all tangled up in the Bedouin scarf. Letting a soft snicker pass her lips, she leaned over, and unwrapped her furry little friend, laying the scarf over the back of the chair. “So sorry, Ignatius.” Bess leaned forward, kissing the top of Ignatius head and he settled down on the chair, his long golden tail wrapping around in front of him.

Bess smiled and took the hat from her head, winking down at him. “Perhaps this would be more your style?” Giggling, she sat the hat down on her desk and slid her jacket off of her shoulders, laying it over the top of her scarf on the back of the chair. Turning to the classroom, she slid her fingers through her hair and let her hand smooth out the length of her hair, letting it fall down her back before planting her hands on her hips. There was a door out to the courtyard area where the animals were kept, well, all the animals that they could keep for teaching purposes. She hoped the previous professor had treated them as pets and not subjects. If there was one thing Bess Fritz hated, it was people mistreating animals.

Turning back to the box, she started to pull out it's contents. She could remember the last time she unpacked her things. It had been just after her divorce from Wentworth. As much as she hated thinking about him and their life together, she knew she wasn't going to be able to avoid thinking about him, not know that they were working at the same place, at Hogwarts of all places. This was the place they first met. She hadn't cared for him all that much back then. He was always too full of himself. Feeling her cheeks blush, she realized that's one of the things she learned to love most about the man. She loved his confidence. But there were things about him, things about him that he wouldn't disclose to Bess.

Hipswitch had taught her that the best way to get to know some one is to fully disclose herself. That's what she had done with Wentworth. She loved him, and she wanted to spend forever with him, so she disclosed everything to him... Well, almost everything. Yes, he knew that she loved children and that she wanted to have one someday, maybe two, but she never told him when she wanted one. She had started wanting one, really bad, just before things started to really go bad between them. She didn't want to bring a child into that, so she kept her desire to herself. She was now pretty sure that she'd never have that dream come true, and she was willing to live with that.

Bess' Traveling Outfit
Ignatius

[Wentworth Davenport]

Wentworth had decided to simply push through his tiredness, so he had gone to fetch breakfast from the kitchens before going to his first class. He was drained but he refused to accept the fact that he had overworked himself the night before. He was not a young man anymore but neither was he old! The new discovery in the restricted section had kept him awake for many more hours than he was used to. Not even the most energetic and fit young man could remain brisk after a week of that. At the moment, nothing else seemed to matter, not sleeping, not eating, and certainly not teaching a group of air-headed third-years. Never did he know, another discovery that awaited him on the way to class would make him forget all about his new point of interest regarding the forbidden arts.

Rubbing his temples, Wentworth tried to ignore the irritating eleven-year-olds running through the halls like a pack of hooligans. Usually he had nothing against kids, he had been one himself after all, but now, they were akin to flies buzzing around his ear. As he saw more of them making their way down the hall, Wentworth took a different route to the classroom. One could never have spotted his tiredness by looking at his outfit. As usual, his getup was close to infallible. Wentworth had never tried to be unassuming. Given his dark wizard label one would assume the man would slink into the shadows, never trying to stick out, but the man never cared for hiding. He showed his sense of style through his clothing, but was not ostentatious or gregarious. His style was simple, yet elegant. He was as always well-groomed but dark circles had started to appear under his eyes from his restless week.

Going past the Care of Magical Creatures classroom, he heard a mjow coming from inside. The first thing that came to mind was how annoying that cat seemed with his pounding headache, he decided that if it came anywhere near him he would blast it to pieces using the expulso spell. But as he went past the room, he could have sworn he’d seen a familiar face in there. Going back to check, a look of sheer surprise appeared on his face. What on earth was Elizabeth Fritzpatrick doing here? It must have been over ten years since he’d last seen his former wife. She was unpacking her stuff, in the Care of Magical Creature’s classroom. This must be our new CoMC professor, he concluded. No wonder he hadn’t heard of this, studying that new tome had left him little time for school gossip. Several theories flashed through his head during the span of just a couple of seconds. The two of them just happened to work at the same school? She just happened to be teaching at Hogwarts? Not likely. She hadn’t seen him, so he leaned against the door for a moment while he watched her slender figure making it’s way back and forth across the room. ”You seem to be in a hurry.”
Wentworth remarked as she unpacked her things. ”Long time no see, Bess. What brings you to Hogwarts? Hopefully not the professor's quarters, because I’m tell you, you’re going to be disappointed.”

[Elizabeth Fritzpatrick]

It wasn't going to take long before Bess had everything put away. She had only brought one box of stuff for teaching. She knew the school would have the rest of the items needed without having to bring much of her own the need arose for them, but Bess had the best thing at her disposal for teaching: her experience and love of the subject. It was what made the best teachers. Love of the subject they're teaching. Bess had that. She always loved animals, magical and other wise, and to be able to share that love with others, especially the young minds here at Hogwarts, she most definitely would enjoy imparting everything she's learned in her life with all of them.

"You know," Bess told Iggy as she put a few of her personal books on the bookshelf, not standing up, but laying over each other, spines facing out so she could see their name, even though she knew exactly which each of them were just by how thick they were, the colors of their edges, the edging on their pages. She knew them inside and out, and she was proud of that fact. "This is not going to be like it was while I was emplyed with the Ministry, Iggy. You will not have to stay in my room while I'm here in classes. Fezz will stay in the Owlry, but you can stay here in the class with me, if you'd like, or stay in the room. You won't be restricted." Bess liked that about this position. Ignatius may not be a magical animal, but he was an animal never the less and wasn't restricted from this classroom.

Bes felt a chill run up and down her spine causing her to freeze when she heard the words coming from the one person she had hoped she wouldn't run into, at least for a while, but leave it to him to be the first one to welcome her. But he wasn't welcoming her. He hadn't even known that she was coming or her reason for being here. Salazar had not told him. Why should she? It was not as though every piece of either Bess' or Wentworth's personal lives was any of her business. It was none other than Bess and Wentworth's.

Bess turned slowly, facing him, a soft smile slowly manifesting itself on her lips. Tilting her head slightly in a brief nod. "Curiosity?" Maybe curiosity in her case wasn't the best of options, but it was something that came naturally. She smiled a little more fully, continuing back over to the box of her belongings that was almost empty by now. She needed to busy her hands. She couldn't just stand there staring at him. "Actually, it's not about curiosity at all. I actually am just setting up for classes." I smiled, placing a few more items on the bookshelf. "You're actually looking at Hogwart's new Care of Magical Creatures' Professor." It was a title she was quite proud of, and somewhere deep inside her, she hoped that he would be proud of her as well. It may have been years since they had actually even seen each other, years since they had beem married to each other, but she still hoped some part of him cared about her.

[Wentworth Davenport]

Wentworth loved that smile of hers. It was always so warm and friendly. All the smiles he saw from his own house were either smug or devious. Make no mistake, he loved his house, he was the head of it after all, but sometimes he needed a break from his fellow Slytherins, and what better break than that welcoming smile that Bess gave him? She'd gotten older, he concluded brilliantly. Though, it felt like she had aged better than him. Clean living in a pure heart, he supposed. He'd always loved her caring yet challenging way of dealing with him. He only got the latter from the Slytherin, luckily that one was by far the most important one. He felt that clean living was over rated in the end. No one ever gained any deeper understanding of things by living on the safe side.

He put his hands in his pockets and took a stroll around the room, inspecting the place thoroughly as he conversed with his ex-wife."Of course I am. I kinda got a feeling that you were the new Magical Creatures professor when I saw you unpack your things in the Care of Magical Creatures professor's classroom. Crazy, right? A bit of his usual snarky humor to kick things off, he made sure to return her smile, though. He made a face at Bess' cat as he started to get close to it. Those yellow eyes inspected him critically as the two them faced each other."I remember this one. Oh, let me think. I wanna say, Incantatus? No, not that. Icarus? Old fellow, isn't he?" Luckily, Bess never brought too many of those animals home with her. It was not that Wentworth disliked animals, it was more that he was indifferent towards them. Therefore, he felt like they were mostly in the way. Besides, animals are messy, and Wentworth hated it when things got messy.

"Funny how you came to work at the same school as I, isn't it? The world certainly is a small place." He made sure to leave some subtility in his tone of voice. His doubt that this was mere coincidence, if you will. Part of him wanted her to seek him out, he'd been very sad to see her go fifteen years ago which wasn't something he could say about his other wives, especially the one who'd taken his child. But why would she try to find him after so many years? She must have considered seeking him out for a long time for this to be part of her plans. Wentworth had forced himself not to think about her following their last meeting. That was always his way of doing things, forgetting it and moving on. But what if the past came back to bite you in the ass?

[Elizabeth Fritzpatrick]

Bess stood back and watched as Wen went around the room as though he owned the place. Of course, he'd been here at Hogwarts longer than she had, so he was more than welcome to be this way. But it wasn't just because he had seniority over a place. It was part of who Wentworth was, and it was part of what had annoyed Bess when they had been here together as students. However, it was part of what she grew to love so much about him while they were together. She loved his presence. She loved how he could walk into a room and everything else seemed to shrink. His presence was that impressive, and she found herself wanting to melt into it, but she kept her distance, not really moving, but not doing her part to close any distance between them.

Trying to keep a girlish giggle from escaping her lips when he acknowledged her feline companion, she quickly covered her lips with a few fingers, only a small smile eluding her tiny fingers. Icarus wasn't that bad of a name, but she would never name a cat after a boy who flew himself too close to the sun. Cat's were curious by nature, and the poor dear would burst into a ball of flames if he were to get too curious about the sun. Poor Iggy. She was about to say he hadn't come in here to talk about her cat or her decorating habits, but he continued on his own, asking her about her presence there, beyond the obvious, why she had come to work at a school where he was teaching at.

“It is a small world after all, is it not?” It wasn't all to polite to answer a question with a question, but she needed to keep her distance, and opening up too much to him would not be good. It had taken so long for her to get over him in the first place, she wasn't particularly looking forward to opening her heart to him again only to be hurt once more. “Professor Hemingway alerted me to the opening. It wasn't until I actually met with Headmistress Salazar prior to being hired for the position that I acutally learned you were here, Wen,” she told him truthfully. “But there shouldn't be any issue with the two of us working together, should there? I mean,” she said, taking an unconscious step toward him, “we functioned well enough in other areas at one time, no reason why we can't now.”

Alright, so that just sounded like she was inviting him to pick things up where they left them off, or rather go back in time and pretend like the dissolution of their marriage never happened. But that had been the farthest thing from her mind... Not that she didn't miss him, she just knew it was best for her not to get too close. “We can certainly coincide as associate professors, can we not?” She hoped they could. She didn't want her presence to bother him in anyway. This was an amazing opportunity for her and she didn't want to give it up just because her ex-husband, a man she was still in love with despite the way things were, to keep her from pursuing it.

[Wentworth Davenport]

It became quite obvious to him that she intended to keep him at a distance. Although that impulse was certainly understandable, Wentworth was in no way about to keep his distance. Though, the fact that she insisted on keeping him at arms length only went to prove that the old flame never dies. After all, why would she worry about getting too close to him if she weren’t afraid of what might happen if she didn’t. He would never had laid a finger on her in a bad way, she knew that very well. Another thing she knew was that he wasn’t one to hold grudges, so falling into old habits was likely her point of concern. This thought never occurred to Wenworth of course. He had suppressed most of their bad memories, so how could he share that sentiment? One thing was very clear to him though, and that was that he had been crazy about Bess in his mid-twenties and as previously stated - the old flame never dies.

At the mention of headmistress Salazar, Wentworth’s grin turned into a frown. The woman was always polite and relatively unlikely to throw sharp object at you, a quality few women possessed, but when it came down it, she couldn’t wait to throw him in Azkaban. Since their last meeting in her office Wenworth’s opinion of her had worsened significantly. He still didn’t think that he disliked her as much as she disliked him but they were certainly foes in both their minds. Hopefully, Bess wouldn’t listen to her too much when she came to her with her allegation towards Wenworth, as she no doubt would. Not only could the headmistress learn things that could worsen his odds of staying out of Azkaban but could also blow his chances with Bess.”Right, Salazar, isn’t she just the merry bringer of good news?” He mumbled to himself.

He forced Salazar out of his mind and focused on Bess instead. That turned his frown upside down. He could tell she was uncomfortable and unsure how to act. The one thing that told him was that his ex-wife was totally still into him. Only a fracture of a second after Bess was done talking did Wenworth reply.”Oh, no worries, it’s all just water under the bridge.” He assured her almost non-chalantly. Stepping closer to her, Wenworth made sure to put on his most charming smile.”Does this mean I should refer to you as Miss Fritzpatrick now? I assume it’s still Miss, not Mrs something?” He was standing well into her personal space, not so close that their noses rubbed together but close enough to reach out and touch her.

[Elizabeth Fritzpatrick]

Bess was extremely aware of how close Wen was standing to her, aside from the obvious standing right in front of her. She could smell him. That book leather and spice. It was intoxicating to her. It always had been. All she had to do was smell him, just one small inhale near him and she was putty in his hands. It had always been that way. She'd always bent to him when he got close. He didn't even have to say anything. That smell was intoxicating, it took everything not to fall into his arms. And those eyes... The way they looked at her. That playful glint they held made her wonder if she'd forgotten how to speak.

But he'd asked her a question. What was it? Oh, he was asking her if she was married. Married? How could she ever be married again when she had been so deeply in love with him. He had been her world until everything went dark and she knew she was going to lose him. But even since them, she knew she had never gotten over him. There had been a time when she thought she could try to get over him, but she hadn't been able, and was attenuated to relenting, even if only to herself, that she would never be over him. And now, standing here in front of Wen, she knew now she always would be. Nothing was ever going to change that.

“Missus?” Bess shook her head, taking a step back, only to back up into her desk not even a few inches behind her. She was stuck. Stuck between a rock and a hard place almost literally. “No...” Her voice broke and she cursed herself for letting her voice falter. “No missus. Still,” she swallowed, “still Miss Fritz.” Closing her eyes only momentarily, she pushed herself forward, trying to find her gumption. Opening her eyes back up, she smiled back at him. “But, ummm... I don't believe there should be an issue with you calling me what you're used to. Do you, Wen?”

She bit her lip, wanting to know the same in return, wondering if he was married right now. “What about you? Are you married right now?” Right now. She added that part, because knowing him, he's probably been married several times since her. But why was she really asking? She didn't want to start things back up again. Well, not want, she knew she couldn't, and asking that didn't preclude her disinterest. If anything, it showed that all he would have to do is flash that perfect smile, show her just a little attention... Oh, he'd already done that. She knew she was sunk.

[Wentworth Davenport]

The thing about love is that it just happens. It can not be rationalized or reasoned with. To pin point what hade made him fall in love with Bess to begin with was as good as impossible. This was a fact that annoyed the transfiguration professor right to his very core. Wentworth had always been drawn to the unexplainable and unknown, but he could always find some kind of answers and make some sort sense out of things. Except for love. He and Bess were neither drastically different nor very alike, they had always had different interests and came from different houses and backgrounds. Was it the small things that had caused him to fall for her? Maybe. There were just a whole lot of maybies. Wentworth pondered the subject as he looked at the woman standing before him. After a couple of seconds he decided to ignore the riddle as it would require him to delve into the past which went against his rules of coping. His thoughts did stray for while, but he forced himself to focus on something else. The beautiful woman standing in front of him for instance. The present was always a far more interesting subject than the past, he found.

"You know, I'm trying to think of a reason but my mind is totally blank." He responded humorously, taking another step closer to her. Her next question widened his smirk. She just can't help herself, he thought to himself. The last three years had actually been the longest time since his sixth year at Hogwarts that he had gone without a romantic relationship of some sort. It was not like he was player or anything, he just always seemed to find interesting people to get involved with, and in some cases, obsess over."As a matter of fact I'm not. Why do you ask? Are you interested? He asked flirtatiously. With Bess here, maybe it was time to end his dry streek.

(OOC:Sorry for taking my time to respond. This week has been a lazy one for me )

[Elizabeth Fritzpatrick]

Bess loved his sense of humor... even though there was a time it was her biggest peeve about him. But the longer she was around him, and even though it had only been a few moments since he had walked into her classroom, she loved it even more, much more to her dismay. She had done her best to get over him, but now, especially as he took a step closer to her, she knew there was never any getting over Wentworth Davenport. Once he got under your skin, he was a part of you. You could never get rid of him completely... But did she want to? She had thought she did. It was safer if she did, but what would that change. He still wouldn't open up to her, and that was the one thing she wanted most out of him.

Fritz bit her lip, doing her best not to turn her head away and show him that he was having any sort of affect on her. “I...” but her voice betrayed her, even with the one syllable she could barely get out. “I figured it was a legitimate question, considering you asked as well.” It was a cheap cop out. Her mouth was betraying her in one way or another. If it wasn't breaking, it was asking questions that shouldn't be asked. Yes, she cared, but she didn't want him to know that she did. She wanted to forget the life they shared together... It was the end she wanted to forget. Everything else, she never would. It was just the end she wanted to terribly to forget. If there was something she could do to forget all the bad between them, she'd do anything for it.

“Here it is,” Bess said, her mouth running away from her again. But she stopped herself. He said things were water under the bridge for them, so there was no reason why she had to say that she missed him, like really missed him. “I don't see why there's any reason we shouldn't be able to enjoy each others company.” She smiled, letting him know that she meant what she said. Because she did. She didn't want what had happened between them to cause problems for … well, her, while they were both teaching here at Hogwarts.