Melody sat in a comfortable leather chair in the library, her black reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose. She didn't notice they were about to fall off as she read out of a very normal looking textbook, alternating with several normal looking magazines. The warm light of several floating candles pooled on her work, while she dictated to the electric blue quick notes quill which copied down every word she said, as she wrote the test for her 7th year Muggle Studies students. She always wrote her tests in advance, so she could make sure to cover all the material. If she didn't she would never remember, and therefore give a test on only the latest material. Giving her classes easy Os. Melody's owl, Leonardo, perched happily on a nearby library shelf, swallowing a mouse he had just successfully snatched from Mrs. Norris in some dark corridor. Other than the trio that would soon be reduced to a pair (poor mouse), the library was silent in the darkness.

[Hope you don't object...]

Sharp, clicking, regular footsteps announced Nicholas' arrival in the library as he began to stride leisurely along the many rows of shelves, his wand out and the tip alight. He was unsure of what he was looking for, however he felt that perhaps he should wander into the restricted section - just to make sure there was nothing too dangerous for his students, of course. Because naturally, he always had their best interests at heart. No; however much he might toy with the girls and tease the boys, he did care for them. He would lay down his life for them if the occasion called - he might have been a troublemaker, but he wasn't a Death Eater. And as he walked, a soft voice carried through the musty air of the library, made heavy by the sheer amount of parchment and history contained within its walls. He paused. The voice - familiar - was a woman's, however it took him a moment to place it exactly. Of course it was Miss Rouge, the Muggle Studies professor he had met at the Ministry. He felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to watch her; not to be in her company, but to watch her from the shadows, and observe her as no one else was around. Some might call this urge 'creepy' - Nicholas just called it artistic curiousity.

He transformed quickly and silently in a whirl of black and white into a magpie - a magpie with a blue beak - and took flight in the library. Following her voice, he flew in the direction he knew Miss Rouge to be, and was not disappointed by what he saw. Floating candles, books and papers scattered every which way, Melody herself looking very contented in her reading glasses. He perched next to what he presumed to be her owl, cocked his head, and watched. Watched how the candlelight made her rich coppery hair shine, watched how she scanned a few lines of writing before dictating a question to her quill, watched how her glasses slipped further still down her nose, so close to the point of falling. He glanced in disdain at the noisily eating owl to his right, then returned his eyes to the much more pleasant sight before him.

Melody took the paper out from under her quill, reading what she had so far. It looked to be about fifty points worth of material. She heard the Hogwarts clock echo through out the library. One. One in the morning. Melody let her head drop onto the back of the chair- she was far too tired to do anymore. Suddenly she felt a sort of chill on the back of her neck. Creepy. She looked over to Leonardo- who had grown silent. He was glaring at a bird beside him- a small thing, with an electric blue beak that seemed to glow in the shadows. Melody smiled, wondering where it had come from. "Hi there." She whispered walking over to the shelf. "Now where did you come from?" He was a little magpie she found on further inspection. "I didn't know you were nocturnal birds..." Melody smiled, shaking her head upon realizing her mistake. "Who are you?"

The magpie seemed to smile and pay little attention to her, then hopped off the perch and swooped over to the desk on which she had been working. He skipped among her papers for a moment, pausing to regard more closely anything shiny that attracted his attention, but seeing nothing much of value he jumped off the desk and onto the chair, where he finally gave up his disguise and became the man he always had been; the smartly dressed, charming man, sitting ever so casually with one foot resting on the knee of the other leg. "Bon soir," he remarked, flicking through one of Melody's muggle magazines. Finally, however, he allowed himself to raise his eyes from the pages and let them rest on her. "You look very pretty in your glasses," he smirked boldly.

Melody's mouth dropped open a little bit when she saw Nicholas transform in her chair, causing her glasses to finally fall off the tip of her button nose. flustered, she tried to catch them but they crashed to the floor, cracking. Melody swore in Sanskrit, picking them off the dusty ground. "Nice to see you again." She collected herself, giving him a half amused smile. "You're in my chair you know."

"I know I'm in your chair. That's the precise reason I sat in it." He laughed quietly to himself and sat forwards a little. "Pass them here - I'll fix them," he offered, holding out his hand to her and fixing her with a penetrating, hypnotic stare. Even without using his veela magic, Nicholas was a strikingly attractive man - he was very aware of this fact - and more often than not, the magic was used for fun and relaxation rather than as a necessity to capture whatever pretty thing he wanted to fly his way. It was difficult for him to contain the magic; it took self control, like a woman wearing a tight corset has to learn to stand straight and not breathe too heavily.

Melody cocked her head to one side. He was rather attractive, and she was sure of it now- he was part Veela. No doubting it. Yet there was something else as well... Melody slowly took the glasses out of her pocket, she had planned to fix them herself, she knew the spell, yet she set them in his outstretched hand, the pads of her fingers brushing his palm for the smallest instant before she drew back. His hands were cold, but very soft. She shoved her hand in her pocket and had a flashback to her childhood in India.

Running, running in a game of tag with Mala, deep in the jungle not far from her father's camp, they giggled and shouted as they dashed through the dense trees and jumped down small cliffs and over portruding roots. She remembered her white sneakers- and the sudden growl. The growl of a jungle cat- she couldn't recall the way it looked, because she didn't bother to look for it. She froze as she heard Mala yell a warning in sanskrit- something to the english gist of "Tiger! Melody! Run away!! Run!" Before she herself took off back towards camp. Melody ran after her, but she heard growling and snarling behind her. She was exhilarated- heart pounding in the overly bright sunlight of the jungle, whipping past trees in what seemed to be a sped up sort of time. She watched the scene flash before her eyes and she foggily returned to the present.

In the presence of yet another tiger. Only this one would not chase her. This one would sit here, watch her, and wait much longer before the hunt- before the chase. Melody felt her heart pounding in her chest. She didn't trust him at all.

The moment he touched them the shards of glass began to fuse together and within seconds they were fixed. No one could say Nicholas was not gifted at magic, particularly charms. He stood up, unfolding his tall, slim frame elegantly, and stood quite close in front of Melody, sliding the glasses back into place himself. He smiled at his handiwork, and stared into her eyes for what might have been a fraction of a second too long to be explained. At this point, he considered it better to keep staring. She would become embarrassed, and blush, most probably, and he would have won that tiny battle. It was difficult to resist the urge to set his magic to work on her - she would be overwhelmed by it in an instant - but he restrained himself. It wasn't necessary, but this conquest would perhaps take longer and be much more interesting than usual.

Melody suddenly saw his face quite near her own, and her reading glasses slipped back into place, the glass good as new. She looked at his face through them- those eyes. Those black, mesmerizing eyes. She couldn't look away. She felt her heart beat even faster, a blush coming to her cheeks. Yet she looked still, what else could she do? She couldn't look away. Yet she felt, somehow, that he couldn't look away from her either.

He smirked, mocking her, and raised one of his pale, long-fingered hands to her cheek, gently stroking it with the back of his knuckles. "Blushing, are we?" he teased, his voice low and more like treacle than ever. The candlelight suited her complexion perfectly; she appeared warm and her hair shone. Candlelight suited him too, though not as well as moonlight. In the moonlit grounds he would look as though he was made of silver; here his skin seemed to be a pale gold colour.

Melody gasped quietly as his cold fingers brushed her rose colored cheeks. She imagined she looked a bit like a tomato, with her red hair, blushing face, and the candlelight making it all worse. Suddenly, the air seemed warmer, the library wasn't as chill as before- and her heart was racing so fast she thought she might die. Melody gently brought her hand up over his, her thin fingers grabbing onto his, holding them still by her face.

As her hand touched his, holding it against her cheek, his other hand lightly touched her waist and he moved a little closer to her - their bodies were almost touching now - and yet, he didn't seem to have moved at all. He just was suddenly closer than he had been before. If he had embraced her, he would have been able to rest his chin on her head easily; though this wasn't an unusual thing. Nicholas was tall, around six and a half feet, and his slim frame and long legs made him appear taller still. He looked down on Melody with those sharp, black eyes, remarking to himself on how young and childlike she seemed below her fringe. He saw her quite suddenly as a scared child, looking for someone to depend on in a new world. Perhaps she would need him, even if she didn't realise it.

Melody looked up at him, suddenly closer than she remembered. He was very tall, and she herself being only 5' 6" he could put his head on hers and then some. She saw something in those eyes though, what was it? Sadness maybe? Something like that. Suddenly she felt his hand on her waist. Melody cocked her head to the side the tiniest bit, still looking at his face. It seemed like time was going very slowly - how much time had really passed?

He smirked and his fingers moved from her cheek to push her hair back, tucking it over her shoulder. Then he drew two fingers along her jaw line, tilting her chin upwards so she was facing him better. His arm was now around her waist and holding her lightly but strangely forcefully in place. "'Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa perfusus liquidis urget odoribus grato, Pyrrha, sub antro? cui flavam religas comam, simplex munditiis?' Do you know what that means, dear Melody?" he asked, relishing the feel of her first name on his tongue. "'What slender youth, drenched in liquid perfume, makes love to you, Pyrrha, on a bed of roses, deep inside a welcoming cave? For whom do you tie up your red-gold hair, simple in its elegance?'" he translated perfectly from the latin. "Tell me, tell me Melody, who was it that you used to make yourself beautiful for? Who was it you were thinking of a few nights ago?"

"Why do you want to know so badly Professor." Melody said, hoping the word stung him just a bit- and she said it with every bit of venom she could conjure up, considering the circumstance. Those circumstances being the fact that he absolutely overwhelmed her. It was odd to have someone care for you again, or at least seem to care. Inside her mind, Melody was afraid that the only reason he paid so much attention to her was because he wanted to know about "the other guy". And once he did, she would seem like just another girl. Melody felt her jaw tremble a bit under the shivery touch of his fingers, but she refused to give his name.

Nicholas blinked once or twice, then drew in a breath and stepped away from her, turning his attention on one of the muggle magazines on her desk once more. "Very well, I shall never ask again," he said crisply, clearing his throat before he spoke. The magazine was about music; it contained pictures of people which had been so well edited that Nicholas almost believed for a brief moment that they might be part-veela themselves. Of course not. He knew enough of muggle culture to understand that. A person in real life was never as they were in a photograph. Not a still photograph, in any case.

Melody gasped as he moved away, suddenly she stood by herself again. He moved like a shadow. She sat on the ground, the time seemed to go by even slower, every word. I'm so torn... She thought to herself, her hands shaking in her lap. "I'm sorry." she said, the tears coming down quietly again. "I just..." Melody shook her head, choking down the sobs. She was not going to cry. She was not going to make a sound.

Nicholas lifted his head at her voice, but didn't seem surprised; many a time a woman had been reduced to tears in front of him. He was not cruel, but he did know how to confuse people, how to twist their will in order to match it against his own - that skill was not only derived from his veela magic. His mother had taught him a great deal about people; about how she got what she wanted from his father, about how she could manipulate her father and make him spoil her, about how jealousy affects people, about how everyone truly does want the same thing...

Melody got up off the ground, walked over to her things and began to collect them. She put the magazine and the textbooks in her bag. She put the raw test in her bag and in flew the quicknotes quill. Melody looked at Nick, who still held one of her magazines in his spidery fingers. "Can I have it back please?" Melody said in a very annoyed tone, yet amazingly her voice was steady. You wouldn't think so with the rivulets of dry salted water on her cheeks.

"It's rude to interrupt someone when they're reading," he responded vaguely, not looking up from the article he was on. She had surprised him a little, and it irritated him; he did not need surprises. He needed predictable, cold truths. Besides, he didn't plan on letting her escape quite so easily. Even if she left without the magazine, he still had it in his possession and she would at some point want it back. At least, she would want to go through the process of taking it back. All he needed now was reassurance that this 'other man' she seemed so fixated on was no real threat. Nicholas had no rivals. He easily made sure of that.