"Mars is bright tonight."

"Please," Zingenmir huffed. "You say Mars is bright every night."

Iximaz turned away from the telescope, a thin pendant clinking softly off the brass rim of the eyepiece. "Of course I do, it's a Harry Potter reference. They make up, like, eighty per cent of my vocabulary."

"Is that right?"

Ix looked at Mir's expression and had the sinking feeling we all know when one's girlfriend is smiling just a little bit too widely for comfort.

"Uh... yes?"

Mir just smiled wider.

---

The next night, Ix walked up to the little stargazing platform with only a slight hint of trepidation. She was certain what was going to happen would be exciting, she just didn't know how it would be-

Oh.

That was how.

Zingenmir was standing before her in a perfect recreation of the robes of Professor Sinistra. Everything about the costume was perfectly accurate... aside from the bits that were missing, namely anything underneath the outer robes.

Iximaz slowed a bit while she tried to pick her jaw up off the floor, but she continued up to the viewing platform and made to say hello. She was stopped by a quick swish of Zingenmir's wand - not Sinistra's, but disguised cunningly as such.

"You are late, young lady. Five points from Gryffindor, and a further five from being out of uniform."

Ix eeped - or would have done, if a sound had been able to escape her lips. Instead, she took an indicated seat by her telescope. To the left of her was a desk and roll of parchment, which she was certain hadn't been there yesterday.

"Now," Zingenmir continued, "seeing as you have been so enthused by Mars of late, I have a task for you. You will look through that telescope, and you will write me twelve inches on the luminosity of Mars and its relevance to divination, with reference to the movements of both Phobos and Deimos as counterpoints to common predictions. I will be watching you the whole time, very, very closely."

Ix, who had had her eyes fixed straight ahead, felt the deep heat as Mir pressed her body against her own. She gulped as she saw her mistress's hands drift across the front of her shirt, undoing the buttons ever so slowly. Her left leg began to twitch, she ground back against her lover's body, and her breath caught in her throat-

-and Zingenmir's wand flicked gently, and a wandless Incarcerous firmly attached Ix's legs to the chair in an elaborate knotwork pattern.

The taller woman's breath was hot in Ix's ear. "Do try not to get distracted, young lady. The sooner you give me that twelve inches, well... I'm a great believer in reward in kind."

The kiss that came after was passionate and desperate as only true love's can be.

With eyes wide as dinner plates and her chest set to heaving, Iximaz recovered a little from the kiss, looked through the telescope... and began, with a trembling hand, to write.